


Alternate

by vaguelyfamiliar



Series: Alternate [1]
Category: Men's Hockey RPF
Genre: (a soft brick because he is fragile), Blowjobs, Boys Are Inarticulate About Their Feelings, Enemies to Lovers, Everyone Wants to Whack Sid Upside the Head with a Brick Only a Little Bit, Falling In Love, Friends With Benefits, Gratuitous Use of Real Quotes from Sid and Claude, M/M, Moving On, Switching, Unrequited Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-29
Updated: 2018-12-06
Packaged: 2019-09-02 08:24:08
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 28,687
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16783264
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vaguelyfamiliar/pseuds/vaguelyfamiliar
Summary: Sometimes your second pick becomes your top scorer. Sid’s not sure he would even draft Giroux second, but it’s the principle of the thing.





	1. Part 1

**Author's Note:**

> This is….a huge labor of love for me that I’m finally putting online in celebration of the upcoming Pens/Flyers game in a couple days! Huge thanks to my betas [yeswayappianway](https://archiveofourown.org/users/yeswayappianway/) and Liv for making this an all-around better work. 
> 
> This takes place starting in January of the 2017-18 season, and follows canonical events pretty closely, ignoring the fact that Sid went to Europe for a good chunk of the early summer 2018. 
> 
> Also, any romantic or sexual relationship depicted in this story is purely fictional, and this fic only borrows the names and faces of the real people mentioned. This would be a good point to say that if you’ve stumbled upon this page through an internet search of yourself or someone you know, please hit the back button now.
> 
> I’m pretty sure there isn’t much content that could need a warning, but there are more spoiler-y warnings below in the end notes for your safety if you like to go into longer fics more aware! Also in the end notes are some links to real-life content I borrowed from or alluded to within this fic. AKA: fun stuff for you to laugh at. Enjoy!

Sid knows the night’s game is going to go terribly hours before it even starts.

There are a few different ways he can tell. He wakes up too early that morning because he’d forgotten to close the hotel curtains; it takes him a frustratingly long time to locate matching socks despite the fact that he only packed the bare necessities; they’re in _fucking_ Philadelphia, and that’s always awful. Anyway, the specifics don’t really matter. All Sid knows is that they’re probably going to lose this game, and that’s saying a lot, because Sid doesn’t go into games with a losing attitude.

The shifty, premature feeling of defeat sticks with him right up until they’re getting ready to go out on the ice at the Wells Fargo Center. He knows he’s too visibly uneasy, twitching tensely and not saying much. The other guys probably notice. Tanger definitely notices, because he thwacks Sid on the shoulder with a gloved hand and says, “Head up, captain,” as they emerge from the tunnel to raucous boos from the Philly crowd.

“But I just feel like we’re going to _lose_ ,” Sid doesn’t say back, because three-time Stanley Cup champions don’t think of failure as an option, much less an inevitability.

It actually doesn’t end up happening that way, though. As if in direct opposition to all of Sid’s upset superstition and poor gut feeling, the Penguins win handily. They score five goals to the Flyers’ one, and the guys are in good spirits on the way back to the hotel. Sid’s feeling slightly better too, so he agrees to hang around at the hotel bar for a bit; no one seems intent on actually going out because the Philadelphia weather is so unforgiving in early January.

He ends up squeezed between Geno and Horny, who’s talking too loud to Hags on his other side. Sid’s mainly tuning him out by watching the condensation on his half-consumed beer drip down to pool at the bottom of the glass.

Geno gets Sid’s attention eventually—not that it’s ever been hard for him. “Sid, why you quiet tonight?” he asks, nudging him with an elbow.

“I dunno,” Sid hedges. “Just tired, I guess. I’m happy we got the win, though.”

Geno nods, pats Sid’s thigh consolingly, and then moves Sid’s glass and draws a smiley face in the condensation puddle. Sid can’t help but let the corner of his mouth twitch up. That really shouldn’t do as much for him as it does.

“I’m happy too,” says Geno, turning the full force of his gaze on Sidney then. For a moment, Sid feels it so viscerally it’s like they’re back on Mario’s porch more than a decade ago, meeting for the first time. Sid has to shake himself to remember that there’s no longer such an unknown future stretching out ahead of them, the feeling Sid had that they could be anything together. Now they’re just in a hotel lobby bar, drinking to an unspectacular regular season win in what’s probably well into the second half of their careers.

“Okay, I’m go Skype Anna and Nikita,” Geno excuses himself, draining the last of his beer and standing up to leave.

Things are very different now.

After Geno makes his exit, guys start peeling off to their rooms one-by-one to call whoever they have waiting for them at home. Soon Sid’s the only one left, even though hanging out down here was never his idea in the first place. It’s only the second day of the new year, but any freshness Sid felt from the new beginning has already expired.

Suddenly he understands the foreboding, off-balance feeling he’s had since morning. It was never Sid’s team that was going to lose—just him.

\---

Basically, that’s how Sid finds himself trudging through the dirty snow to the corner drugstore to buy chocolate. _Wow, Philly sucks!_ he texts Taylor, for something that will keep him from making eye contact with passersby on his way. Or maybe for something that will remind him that he does have family to talk to and he’s not a loser.

But his gut feelings are never wrong, and probably everybody in the world would call Sid a perpetual winner except for himself. _My gut feelings are NEVER wrong_ , he texts Taylor because he can. She’s going to know he’s had exactly two beers and one shot to keep him warm, enough to feel it, but only a bit.

Philadelphia’s not that bad though because they have the same convenience stores as Pittsburgh, so Sid has a pretty good idea where to find what he’s looking for. The good chocolate with sea salt and caramel is usually in the back. But when he turns the corner into the candy aisle, that’s not what he finds first.

It takes him less than a second to recognize Giroux even with the toque he’s tucked over his bright hair. For a panicked moment, Sid debates ducking back the way he came and disappearing before Giroux’s any the wiser, but just the time that Sid spends hesitating is enough for Giroux to notice his presence.

At least he’s not any more pleased about it than Sid is, because he sighs and says, “Fuck this day,” as one of the seven candy bags he’s holding slips through his grasp. The unceremonious smacking sound the plastic makes as it hits the floor encapsulates Sid’s whole mood.

“You should have a basket for all that,” Sid remarks flatly, stepping forward to pick up the dropped bag, seeing as the rest would probably come tumbling down too if Giroux attempted to get it.

Giroux rolls his eyes and takes it from him. “Too late now, but thanks for the advice.”

After that, they clearly don’t have anything left to say to each other. Sid thinks they silently agree to just get what they came for and go about their separate business, rather than antagonize each other. The days of their rivalry being hateful and violent have been behind them since they played together at World Championships in 2015—they’d been cool then, maybe even friendly. However, it’s been since the 2016 World Cup of Hockey that they were on a team together last, and they haven’t spoken much since, so Sid gets why Giroux might not be inclined to make small talk with the captain of the rival team that just embarrassed them on home ice.

He can see the last remaining sea-salt caramel bar on the shelf right in front of Giroux, and that’s all he needs before he can leave, so he reaches to collect it.

So does Giroux.

In fact, Giroux swipes it narrowly before Sid can, and all of Sid’s sympathy for him immediately vanishes. “No way,” he complains, “you have about a hundred other junk foods and you still need the only one I want?”

“I’m just saving you from yourself. You look like you’ve gained weight,” says Giroux, sniffing loudly. “The bad kind.”

God, this is why Sid doesn’t like that ginger freak. Fuck what he thought about Giroux being tolerable in the past, he’s just a fucking vending machine of mediocre burns that Sid truly has no time for—

He takes a breath and counts to five, reminding himself that the best way to escape interacting with Claude Giroux as quickly as possible is _not_ to give in to the prickling heat of annoyance creeping up under his skin, but to ignore his buzzing as one would a fly’s.

“We could…share?” Sid suggests calmly. “I take half, you take half?”

It’s the only quick solution he can think of, but Giroux tips his head back and lets out a frankly unnecessary groan. “Is this guy for real right now?” he asks the ceiling rhetorically. Sid looks away from the stretch of his throat and grits his teeth in growing irritation.

But then Giroux blurts, “ _Crisse_ , Sid, I’d literally rather get fucked than share.” And that’s—well.

It’s totally just an expression, but they both kind of freeze. Possibly because he’s never confirmed it to anyone who’s not a teammate, but a lot of guys in the league… _suspect_ about Sidney. Sid never brings dates to anything, he’s never seen with women. Most other players his age have wives, maybe kids conceived _with_ those wives, and Sid won’t have that. Will never have it like that, exactly.

And Giroux, for his part, at least seems to look at men a lot, if Sid remembers Prague and Toronto well enough. Sid’s seen him look; not at Sid himself, but at men in general. He remembers Giroux in the Prague dressing room right after their final win, naked save the gold medal around his neck, the towel over his shoulder, the cap on his head. Even though Giroux had been the one with his dick out, he’d been drunk enough to look other dudes up and down as if they were equally naked. To be fair, some of them actually were. But if Sid recalls correctly, Giroux had also had a girlfriend there at all the games, so. Maybe he’s into whatever. Sid can’t pretend to really know.

He realizes quickly that neither of them has said anything since Giroux announced his willingness to get fucked. And now that he’s thinking about Giroux getting fucked, it’s not as horrid an image as he might’ve thought, which is probably bad news for Sid’s dignity.

“Well, I guess that’s another option,” Sid’s mouth says without his brain’s permission.

Even though he’d been the one to start the whole thing, Giroux seems even more unsure of his footing at that. After a pregnant pause, he says, “Holy shit. Are you trying to…offer?” He looks like he can’t quite believe it, and that’s fair, because neither can Sid. He’d like to blame this all on the alcohol, but the little he drank has had plenty of time to oxidize in his system.

“Not necessarily,” Sid responds as vaguely as possible, because he still can’t tell whether a clear proposition would make Giroux burst into laughter or consider it seriously. Giroux levels him with an unimpressed gaze, like he knows exactly how cowardly Sid’s non-answer is. And fuck that, Sid’s not a coward, so he takes a deep breath and tacks on, “But I could be?”

Giroux blinks once. Blinks again. Then, finally: “Okay. Follow me.”

And he turns on his heel and heads deeper toward the back of the store.

Sid’s mind blanks out for a second before his feet kick into gear to do as he’s told. Did Giroux just agree? Did Sid even want him to? All he can do is follow and figure it out as he goes.

Giroux peels off his toque and tucks it in his coat pocket as he walks, so Sid trails behind ginger hair all the way to what appears to be the single unisex restroom. He just watches, still kind of dumbfounded, as Giroux opens the door and slips in, still carrying seven bags of candy and a chocolate bar. He unfolds the baby-changing station and carefully places each bag down on the makeshift shelf space.

“You had to bring all of that with you?” asks Sid skeptically.

“Hey, I’m still buying it after this,” Giroux counters. Sid wants to roll his eyes, but he’s also possibly about to hook up with Claude Giroux in a dirty drugstore bathroom, so he doesn’t have a leg to stand on. If hooking up is even what’s about to happen, that is. Sid still hasn’t confirmed.

When Giroux is done arranging his groceries, he gives Sid an intent look. Sid feels Giroux’s eyes travel down over the entire length of his body, and he figures even if a hook-up isn’t confirmed, it’s a pretty good guess.

“If I’m gonna touch your dick,” Giroux says, and yep, there it is, “you can’t be wearing that douchey scarf.”

“This is a plain black scarf,” Sid points out.

“ _God_ , you’re an asshole.”

Sid has no idea how that’s merited, but diplomatically decides not to point out that Giroux is the one who’s stolen his chocolate, insulted his scarf, and called him names, because he does kind of want his dick touched.

From there, Giroux steps exceptionally close to Sid to unwrap the scarf from around his neck, and that’s the first time it hits Sid that they’re actually doing this. He can feel hands doing away with his scarf, brushing over his neck and his collarbones as they go. He’s backed up against the closed door and one of his own hands comes up to rest on Giroux’s hip instinctively, but he still feels kind of like a teenager that doesn’t know what he’s doing.

Their faces are easily close enough to kiss now, but neither of them goes for it. Giroux’s palm coasts down to where Sid’s dick is starting to wake up to the situation. He presses into it a little, and even just the pressure through his pants is enough to make him exhale and let his eyes fall closed.

“Not too late to change your mind,” Giroux tells him, but he’s wrong. Sid feels like he’s stumbled into this situation almost entirely on accident, but that stumble carried him over a line that he’s not sure he can retreat from. He doesn’t think he wants to, strangely enough.

“Keep going,” Sid urges.

Then Giroux’s undoing his belt, unzipping him, and pulling his cock out. He licks his hand and spits into it for good measure, and Sid thinks that’s kind of gross but then it’s warm and wet when Giroux touches him again and any protest he might’ve had dissolves into a groan as he’s coaxed to full hardness.

He eventually gets a hand between them to reciprocate, and that’s when the pace starts to pick up. Sid can’t see much from where his forehead is pressed into Giroux’s shoulder, but Giroux feels thick and solid. They’re rocking into it a bit, strokes speeding up. Sid’s biting his own lips to keep embarrassing grunting noises from coming out, so it’s awkwardly quiet aside from the unmistakable sound of hand-on-dick. He tries valiantly not to come first seeing as he’d like to preserve what little is left of his pride, but Giroux’s been working Sid longer than Sid’s been working him, so he fails in that effort. His come spills over Giroux’s hand, some narrowly missing his pants to splatter on the tile below.

“Fuck, Croz,” Giroux breathes out, the first thing either of them has said for a long while. It solidifies how unfamiliar this is; Sid doesn’t think anyone’s called him that since the World Cup, much less someone he’s trading orgasms with.

It doesn’t take much longer after that, especially once Giroux puts his hand over Sid’s and guides him into the exact grip he likes. He says, “Like _that_ ,” as if this is information Sid needs to retain, as if this is ever going to happen again, which it’s not.

But Giroux does moan when he comes. Sid thinks it’s alright to feel a little victorious in that.

\---

“Wash your hands,” Giroux instructs Sid snidely as he strides out the door afterward. He gets away with all the chocolate, too. What a tool.

\---

Sidney pointedly and promptly forgets about it, for all intents and purposes. He can’t wipe it from his mind completely, but he figures everyone gets desperate sometimes, everyone has lapses in judgement like that. It’s not a big deal. So what if he can never look the captain of his rival team in the eye again? Or who knows, maybe it’ll be the opposite. Maybe the next time they meet on the ice Giroux will be even more awkward about it than Sid feels, and Sid can psych him out by keeping prolonged eye contact that screams _yeah, remember that time you willingly jerked me off? You really did that._

But Sid did that too. So maybe not.

What Sid also forgets is that it won’t be at another Penguins-Flyers game that they see each other next. The All-Star Game in Tampa falls at the end of January, and Sid’s bound to see the captain of the Flyers there.

The All-Star Game is a bittersweet distraction from the idiotic and unfair decision to hold them all back from the Olympics. Sid’s had fun at All-Star weekend both times he’s been before, but he had more fun winning gold for Canada both times he’s been to the Olympics. At least he’s had the chance to do it at all; he can’t imagine how hard it is for players like Giroux, who were passed over in 2010 and 2014 but probably would’ve been named to a hypothetical 2018 team. They might never get a shot.

But despite all the hoopla, Tampa Bay is warm and welcoming when everyone arrives Friday evening, and the good mood lasts into the media circus of Saturday morning. Sid holds a parrot, tries on a pirate hat, and makes fun of Tanger as much as possible. It’s only been half a day, but it’s shaping up to be an okay weekend.

Seeing Flower on the ice Saturday afternoon is both relieving and unsettling, as it has been. Things just feel a little more right whenever he’s around. At the same time, looking over to see him dressed in new colors never really gets less odd. As weird as it is, Flower’s like a second kidney; Sid can still function fine without it, but there’s no forgetting that a part of him has been surgically removed. Flower’s so vivacious, though. It’s easy to settle into his friendship again, especially with Tanger there alongside them.

Aside from taking part in a few common skills challenges, it takes until later that night to run into Giroux in any significant capacity. Sid’s out with Tanger, Flower, and Nealer when it happens. They’re at a low-key bar near the hotel everyone’s staying in, so it makes sense that other NHLers might show up, but Sid is still surprised to see Nate—with Giroux in tow.

Sid feels his heart lurch as suddenly and dramatically as if in response to a jump scare in a horror film, heat flushing through his body as a biological reaction to the furious pumping of his blood. He checks around at his current and former teammates, but it looks like he’s the only one who wants to scream.

Nate lights up when he spots Sid in the corner booth. There’s only the four of them sitting there, but the booth is designed to accommodate a larger group. So even though Nate and Giroux have Brayden Schenn with them too, there’s more than enough room to make it weird if Sid and the guys don’t invite them to the table. This is something Sid really doesn’t want to do, even though he adores Nate.

It doesn’t matter what Sid wants though, seeing as Nate kind of just sits down next to him without Sid’s prompting, good-naturedly as he does all things. “Well, what do you know?” he intones. “All-stars out on the town!”

“I don’t know if it’s that exciting when it’s just because this is like, the one bar in Tampa that doesn’t suck,” replies Nealer, but he scoots over to let Schenn and then Giroux into the booth. Sid chances a glance at Giroux, whose eyes flick over to meet his and then immediately dart away.

Sid’s trying to be casual, but he can’t help but feel like his airway is a bit constricted. It’s like every time he thinks he takes a breath, he’s not actually getting any oxygen to his brain. It’s one thing to see Giroux again from across the ice while they’re surrounded by other players, but it’s another thing altogether to be sitting across a table from him, just over an arm’s length away. There’s no hiding here, no camouflage.

Giroux doesn’t give anything away, however. He hardly even looks at Sid. By the time Flower’s halfway through a story about his daughter throwing up on Santa’s lap over the holidays, Sid’s hackles have started to drop. Giroux’s not about to out both Sid and himself to an entire table of people in public, even if most of those people already know about Sid.

In fact, as the minutes roll by and everyone settles deeper into their drinks, Giroux doesn’t look his way more than twice. Sid starts to feel silly for making it out to be a whole big thing in his head. Giroux doesn’t seem to care any more than anyone else Sid’s had meaningless unexceptional sex with. And that suits Sid just fine, even if he keeps watching when Giroux stands to go get them another round from the bar.

“Looks like G’s got an admirer,” Schenn points out. For a fraction of a second, Sid is worried that Schenn means him, but when he traces his gaze, he notices that there’s a woman sitting on a stool at the bar right next to where Giroux has edged his way in to speak to the bartender. She’s blinking at Giroux repeatedly, looking kind of like people do when they recognize Sid out in Pittsburgh. That sort of, “Oh shit, I thought you might be in the area, but I didn’t expect it to be this _exact_ area.”

She’s definitely pretty, but she doesn’t even make an attempt to talk to Giroux, just keeps looking at him and looking away until he has all of the drinks he came for and Nate goes to help him carry them back.

And when they both reach the table, Giroux swoops Nate’s spot next to Sid.

“Hey,” he says to Sid only, face unassuming.

“Hey,” Sid says back. Nothing else comes to mind.

Giroux hesitates, then gives him an awkward smile and throws his attention back into the conversation at hand, which happens to be about him. “G, that girl was actually ready to tear your pants off right at the bar,” Nate is saying. Sid thinks that’s an extreme exaggeration, and Nate knows it. She looked more like she was considering asking him for an autograph than considering hitting on him.

“Which?” Giroux asks, turning to look over his shoulder with embarrassing lack of subtlety.

“Hey, you should go for it,” Schenn says, sounding too encouraging to be genuine. He waits a beat before finishing, “Maybe tonight’s the night you finally lose your virginity.”

Flower snorts a laugh at that chirp, and Giroux immediately responds, “I’m not a virgin,” to the table at large, like any of them thought he actually was.

“That’s okay,” Nealer contributes. “It’s still possible for you to be bad at sex.”

“I’m not bad at sex,” Giroux counters again, and if Sid didn’t already know first-hand that Giroux is in fact capable of at least bringing someone to orgasm, he’d think the opposite just from his weak defense.

Tanger plucks the maraschino cherry out of his bougie whiskey sour. “Can you do the cherry stem thing? Where you tie a knot?” He detaches the stem from the cherry and pops it in his mouth, then pulls it out maybe twenty seconds later. He brandishes it toward the center of the table, close enough for Sid to see that there is actually a miniscule knot in the middle of it now. “Means I’m a good kisser,” Tanger smirks.

“It means you’re eleven years old,” Sid argues.

“Sid’s jealous he can’t do it,” Flower tells the table.

Sid snorts. “As if you can! Come on, let’s see it.”

Flower has to reach over to steal the cherry from Schenn’s Tom Collins seeing as his own drink is just a beer, but sure enough, he’s able to do the trick only a little slower than Tanger. “Ha-ha,” is all he says around his tongue, stuck out with the stem knot visible on it.

After that everyone wants to give it a go. Nealer makes a trip to the bar and returns with a glass full of just cherries. Even Giroux proves his ability to pull it off, though he makes dumb concentration faces as he does it.

After awhile it becomes clear that the only person who can’t do it is Sidney. He does try, but it just doesn’t make physical sense. How is it even supposed to work? The stem is like two inches long, how can anyone push the middle down enough to get the ends to cross?

“You’re going about it all wrong,” remarks Giroux, a furrow in his brow as he watches Sid’s cheeks shift around.

“How can you even tell?” Sid warbles, tripping over his own tongue, which is probably nearer to being tied in a knot than the cherry stem at this point.

Giroux scoffs. “You’re pushing down with your tongue, aren’t you?” He leans closer, probably to more effectively boss Sid around. “You need to push up, then bite the ends.”

Sid keeps trying, but he’s getting flustered by the way Giroux’s focus is zeroed in on his mouth, his jaw, his throat. Suddenly it feels like he’s attempting something glaringly pornographic, and _failing_ at it to make matters worse.

He spits the unknotted stem into his hand, insisting, “You guys are all mutants.”

But he ends up kind of wishing he’d kept trying until he’d done it, if only to avoid Giroux’s eyes alight with the rare pleasure of beating Sid at something. “It’s fine. Not everyone can be that _orally gifted_ ,” he teases, heavy-handed with the entendre. His gaze is challenging and excited.

Sid narrowly avoids sputtering. “You know it’s garbage! A cherry stem means nothing about what someone can—” he cuts himself off.

“What someone can do with their mouth?” Giroux finishes, looking Sid dead in the eye. That fucker is enjoying this. “I dunno, you might just have to accept that you’re untalented.”

_Untalented_ , Jesus. That’s not a word Sid ever hears people use to describe him, unless they’re talking about karaoke, or maybe arts and crafts. Sid sits up straighter, narrows his eyes. “But that’s just not the case,” he finds himself saying, even though he knows Giroux’s baiting him, and he’s playing right into Giroux’s hand. There’s just something about Claude Fucking Giroux as a complete entity that’s perpetually getting under Sid’s skin. He’s like some sort of rash that stays dormant most of the time but acts up every once in awhile, itching. It’s manifested itself a hundred different ways throughout the many years they’ve known each other—in jokes, in fights, in laughs, in shouts, in silence, in shoves. It’s been screaming at each other over fifteen guys’ heads on separate benches, and it’s been playfully nudging each other on the same one.

And now it’s this. Right now, it’s Giroux shifting almost undetectably if not for how his knee makes contact with Sid’s under the table. Giroux shrugs with one shoulder, taking a pull from his beer bottle. When he puts it back down, it’s closer to Sid than it was before. “I guess there’s other ways to prove yourself. If you think you can.”

It’s Sidney forgetting that he hadn’t even wanted to _see_ Giroux this weekend in the face of that challenge.

Sid feels like he never knows where they’ll stand every time they see each other, whether they’ll be bitter enemies or almost friends. But at this point Sid’s pretty confident that it’s, you know, going down. He can’t believe he’s letting Giroux _goad_ him into hooking up again, but that’s definitely what’s happening.

“Fine,” he says quietly, just for Giroux. Then to everyone, “Okay, I’m headed back to the hotel. Have a good night, guys.”

“I’ll walk with you, I’m pretty tired,” Giroux follows up, standing to let himself and Sid out of the booth.

No one seems any the wiser, except maybe Flower, who’s giving Sid an uncomfortably knowing grin. “Yeah, it’s about that time of the night, isn’t it?” he says, full of shit.

“Flower’s paying my tab,” Sid tells everyone, despite the fact that he doesn’t even have a tab open. Then they make their escape.

\---

They don’t say much on the walk, and when they get back to the hotel, Sid steers them in the direction of his room. Giroux may have navigated the whole thing by playing his cards exactly right, but it’s Sid’s operation from here on out. His boat.

They’ve barely shut the door behind them when Sid shoves him back onto the bed, because if he’s going to give a blowjob, he’s going to give it the way he feels like, and that’s perched over Giroux’s legs and going down on him before he can do more than shove his jeans to his knees and ruck his shirt up. Giroux was already hard from the jump; it’s probably a result of having nothing to think about on the way except for the blowjob he was about to get. Sid finds that he likes to suck dick in this position if the other guy doesn’t mind it a little sloppy; it’s harder to contain his saliva with gravity working, but it’s easier to maintain control over how deep he takes it. And he takes Giroux as deep as he can without gagging like an amateur.

Also, it’ll be a cold day in hell when he kneels for Giroux.

Anyway, Giroux doesn’t seem to mind the spit rolling down his shaft and over his balls. “You don’t mess around, do you?” he chokes out, fingers tightening on Sid’s shoulders.

Sid pulls off to make eye contact, but he stays close, knowing what the visual will look like. “You said I had something to prove,” he reminds Giroux, lips brushing over the head of his cock as he says the words.

Giroux’s eyelids flutter at the whisper of contact, but he keeps his head firmly up, never tearing his gaze from Sid’s lips despite what it must be doing to his neck. “You’re doing pretty good so far,” he admits.

_Pretty good_ isn’t what Sid shoots for. He takes Giroux back in with renewed determination, being firm on the underside with his tongue and pressing on his slit when he gets back to the head. Precome spurts right out into his mouth. Sid would smirk if he could.

As Giroux’s breath starts to pick up, he starts getting louder. The noises he makes begin to drag out, pulled out of him by the suction Sid focuses on building until it’s punishing. He can feel how close Giroux is, hips shifting around under Sid like he’s hurtling toward somewhere he didn’t want to be quite so fast. “God, fuck—” he lets out, broken off by another long groan. Sid’s own cock twitches at the unapologetic sound and he realizes how hard he is in his pants. It’s all pretty far off from the stunted grunts and awkward rhythm of last time.

But then Giroux taps at the back of his neck and says, “Hey, pull off for a sec,” so Sid does. He’ll blame the haze of arousal for how easily Giroux is able to flip them over from there so he’s on top. “I’m not gonna come in five fuckin’ minutes,” he offers as explanation, and then he’s pushing Sid’s pants down to get his cock out as well. “Especially not for someone who can’t even make a knot in a cherry stem.”

Sid huffs out a laugh, as odd as that is while he’s lying under Claude Giroux with his pants around his ankles and his shoes still on. “Enjoy it, because it’s the first time you’ve ever had something up on me.”

“Actually, it’s the second,” Giroux says, pushing his wet erection into the vee of Sid’s hip to punctuate the innuendo. Sid will pretend he’s talking about the Flyers’ 2012 Round 1 win against the Pens, and not his dick. _Something up on him_ , indeed.

Giroux takes them both into his hand and strokes. His forehead drops to Sid’s shoulder, the same spot it occupied the first time they did this. Sid can feel his breath ghosting over the fabric of his shirt, thinks maybe he should’ve taken it off. And then he can’t do much thinking beyond Giroux’s cock lined up against his and how fucking stellar that feels with Giroux working them both over. But as childish as it might be, he also doesn’t want to come so quickly. He doesn’t want to come first at all, seeing as he did last time and twice in a row seems like too much satisfaction to let Giroux have. “I think we’re getting away from the point,” Sid insists while pushing at Giroux’s shoulder, “which is you in my mouth.”

“I’ll let you get back to business then, captain,” Giroux says, which Sid tries not to find hot. It doesn’t even make sense seeing as he’s not the Metropolitan Division captain this year—Ovi is. Sid banishes that thought immediately because Ovi does not have a place in Sid’s brain during sex, and Giroux is rolling onto his back for Sid, cock swinging up against his stomach.

Sid takes hold of him again quickly, scooting down to get back into position. He pumps Giroux with one hand and nudges his knee up with the other for better access. This way he can suck Giroux’s balls into his mouth one at a time, and he’s glad he does because it makes Giroux curse in French, words Sid hardly recognizes but knows are dirty.

He’s cutting off aborted moans by the time Sid licks up his shaft and takes a breath to ready himself again, stroking Giroux hard and fast. He flicks his tongue over the frenulum, that spot just under the head that drives most guys crazy. Clearly it works for Giroux too, because his hips are twitching again. “Sid,” he breathes as Sid touches his lips to the head, still stripping his shaft. “Sid, _Sid_ ,” and perhaps he should have taken that as a warning, because then Giroux blows all over Sid’s lips before Sid can even take him between them.

“Fuck, _fuck_ , sorry,” Giroux’s saying, but it comes out as a moan as another stripe of come gets the corner of Sid’s mouth. Sid keeps touching him through the aftershocks, because it’s already all on his face now and as long as none gets in his eyes, it’s harmless.

As soon as he recovers, Giroux lifts a hand to wipe the spunk off Sid’s mouth, getting the bulk of it from the bottom lip. But Sid sucks it off his thumb before he can pull it away—it tastes disgusting, but it’s worth it just to see Giroux’s head thunk back against the bed when he does it.

“That’s filthy,” Giroux says like he loves it.

Sid ignores him. He’s been achingly hard for what feels like forever. “Alright, now you can get a hand on me.”

Giroux gets both hands on him, actually. He pulls Sid up over his lap so that he can stroke him in one hand and play with his sac in the other, and suddenly Sid feels like he’s been waiting for so long that he could shoot off at any moment, his orgasm having snuck up on him like he’s a teenager again. So he just closes his eyes and feels it build until he bubbles over like boiling water on a stove.

\---

Luckily, Giroux scrams pretty quickly after they settle. Sid doesn’t even need to drop any hints about liking his space or needing to shower. There’s not much redressing to be done because there hadn’t been much undressing in the first place, so Giroux pretty much just zips up, gives Sid a friendly knee pat, and is on his way.

This is a relief. He doesn’t know what he would’ve done if Giroux showed any inclination to stick around unwelcome.

Sid does take a shower then. There’s still come on his chin he needs to wash off before it gets uncomfortably dry. He stands under the spray and stares at the nondescript tile in the bathroom thinking about how he’s going to have to look Giroux in the eye again as soon as tomorrow, but now with the added layer of having blown him pretty thoroughly. Maybe Sid should start thinking these things through before he, you know, does them. He thought he learned that lesson long ago.

But he also can’t say he regrets it at all, so at least there’s that.

\---

He does see Giroux the next day for the actual All-Star Games. They lose their match against the Atlantic Division, but Sid gets a goal off an assist from Ovi and Giroux scores one as well. They don’t talk much on the bench, but it’s a good time all around.

Sid finds Nate afterward, because he’s a fellow loser as part of the Central Division and they’d hardly caught up the night before. Sid looks upon Nate as something between a bro and an actual little brother; they’re genuinely good buddies and he’d never underestimate Nate as an opponent or a teammate, but Nate is also eight years younger than him and just settling into himself as a person and a player. Sidney tries never to be condescending about it, but he sees a lot of his younger self in Nate: young kid from Cole Harbour, just coming up in the league but still expected to revive his franchise. Sid knows Nate will get there, and he successfully avoids getting preachy about it because he knows it matters more to Nate to have him as a real friend than as a role model.

They get dinner together and then hang out in Nate’s room for awhile, away from the cameras and reporters and circus of the whole weekend. Eventually, a knock comes at the door. Sid is expecting it to be one of Nate’s friends, maybe someone like Seguin, who hangs around with everyone. He’s not expecting it to be Giroux, but Nate opens the door to red hair and a Flyers Hockey tee-shirt nonetheless.

“Oh, hey,” Nate greets him. “What’s up?”

Giroux shrugs as if it answers anything, then makes eye contact with Sid from around Nate’s shoulder. “Can I talk to Croz for a minute? It’s kind of an emergency.”

That’s worrisome. Sid can’t think of what emergency Giroux could possibly be coming to him about, but he stands to follow him out the door regardless. “Is everything okay?” he asks after he closes it behind them.

Confusingly, Giroux just casually leans up against the corridor wall with one shoulder and replies, “Yeah, it’s all good.” Sid has no idea what to say to that, but apparently Giroux wasn’t waiting for a response because he eventually continues. “So, do you wanna come to my room?”

Sid blinks. “What’s the emergency?” he checks again.

Giroux’s eyebrows raise incredulously. Sid realizes a moment too late that there is no emergency. “Oh my god! _That’s_ your crisis?”

“My sex drive is important,” Giroux states plainly.

“You couldn’t just text me?” Sid is not an expert, but he’s pretty sure that’s how most booty calls take place these days.

Another shrug. “Lost your number.”

“How—how did you even know I was with Nate?” Sid fumbles, feeling behind the curve of the entire interaction.

“He sent out a Snapchat,” Giroux answers like it’s obvious. Sid knows what Snapchat is, thinks Geno even made him an account at one point, but he doesn’t get the point of photos disappearing. He thought pictures were for if you wanted to remember something. And anyway, he hadn’t even noticed Nate taking a picture.

It occurs to Sid that Giroux has actually sought him out for this. It’s not an accident or a spur-of-the-moment thing like both times before. He’d seen that Sid was with Nate, then gone to where Nate was likely to be in order to find Sid. In order to invite Sid into his bed.

“Well, I don’t know,” Sidney rubs the back of his neck. He’s not sure how to voice his confusion without making the situation more awkward than it already is. “I didn’t think we’d do this again.”

Giroux considers that information. “That’s fine, but like, why wouldn’t we?” He pauses once more, and something like doubt creeps across his features. “Did you not have a good time?”

No, he did, Sid realizes consciously for the first time. He had a really satisfactory experience. “I did,” he confirms verbally. But he’s still having trouble reconciling that fact with the implication that he and Giroux could keep hooking up in the future. Repeatedly.

Maybe Giroux picks up on this. “Sid, you’re the most famous hockey player in the world, and you’re into guys. You can’t tell me it’s that easy for you to just hook up with anyone. What’s the harm in getting it from each other when it’s this convenient?”

Sid wonders if it’s petty that Giroux’s chosen the term ‘most famous’ rather than ‘best’ to describe Sid’s hockey. He wonders if it’s petty that he notices. “You’re also a hockey player who’s into guys,” Sid reminds him.

“Not only guys,” Giroux says. “But yeah, basically, that’s why I’m asking. I was thinking…” he shifts nervously, like he doesn’t know if it’s really a good idea to say what he wants to say. “I was thinking you could fuck me.”

Sid tries not to let his surprise show on his face, unsure if that’s for Giroux’s benefit or for his own. “Right now?”

Giroux takes this for hesitation. “My room’s just down the hall. Come on, how long’s it been since you last fucked a guy?”

How is he so sure it’s been that long for Sid? How does he know Sid doesn’t have like six different guys he could call up at any given moment, or at least even just one who isn’t most often seen wearing traffic-cone orange?

Well, Sid supposes Giroux can tell that things likely wouldn’t have even happened between them that first time if they hadn’t both been so pent up, and Sid likely wouldn’t have been that pent up if he were getting laid regularly.

And it has been awhile. “At least a year,” Sid admits grudgingly. He still remembers it too well for his own liking. The guy had been tall, dark-haired. He’d been visiting the States from Russia, the main thing was. It had seemed like a quality idea at the time, picking this familiar stranger up in a DC bar after a tough loss on the road. But afterward he’d felt shittier than before, knowing Geno was just down the hall on the phone with his wife and child while Sid was pulling out of some second-rate imitation.

He hadn’t fucked anyone since then. There’d been other things in between, a couple quick hookups, but nothing major. And then there’d been Giroux.

“How long since you’ve…” Sid doesn’t quite know how to couch it. _Been on the other end? Taken it?_

The drift is caught. “Too long, man. Too fucking long.”

Sidney feels his deliberation tip in favor. He’ll probably enjoy himself, if he says yes. It would probably be good.

\---

It is good, fucking Giroux for the first time. It’s good to finally get naked with him, vulnerable in a way that’s less scary than Sid thought it might be. It’s good getting him on his hands and knees to finger him open, and it’s good pushing in from behind. It’s good covering Giroux’s back with his own body, hearing him suck in labored gasps with each pass over his prostate. It’s good coming into the condom with that kind of tight heat around him.

It’s great not to have his mind anywhere else. It’s great to fuck someone and truly not be thinking about anyone who isn’t in the room with him.

\---

Giroux passes out almost directly after they’ve both come. Sid nearly wouldn’t believe how quickly he goes dead to the world if not for the light snoring that starts up a moment later. Giroux hadn’t even cleaned himself up before he’d fallen asleep, which sounds like the sort of thing that would make Sid wake up grumpy if it were him, but it’s Giroux’s bed and Giroux’s life. Sid’s sure he can deal with it.

Giroux stays firmly in his slumber while Sid borrows the bathroom to wipe himself down, and still when he puts his clothes back on and lets himself out.

But less than an hour later, Sid gets a text. It says _where did you go lol_ and his contacts say it’s from Claude Giroux. So either he’d asked someone for Sid’s number or he’d been bullshitting when he said he didn’t have it.

It’s a mystifying text too. What was he supposed to do? Watch TV until Giroux woke up, and _then_ leave?

He decides to answer honestly. _I went to my room to start packing_ , Sid types. He and Tanger have a flight out early Monday morning.

_nerd_ , he gets back, which he thinks is unjustified. A moment later, his phone buzzes again. _see you in march._

That’s right, their next game against the Flyers falls in early March, four or five weeks away. Sid supposes he’s looking forward to it, now. _See you in March._

\---

The thing about Geno is that there’s no way to change it. It’s not about what’s fair or what Sid deserves or how much Sid feels. It’s the simple fact that Geno will never fall in love with him, point blank. Sid spent a long time thinking maybe he eventually would, because that happens for some people. Some people really spend years of their lives unaware of what’s right in front of them and then one day wake up to that new desire. But this far down the line, Sid knows with bone-deep certainty that it won’t happen for Geno, no matter what Sid looks like, or says, or does. So Sid could spend eternity hoping and waiting for something that’s never going to come—he feels like he already has, sometimes. But there must come a certain point when Sid realizes: even if that non-existent train finally showed up at the station to let Sid on, it could never really go where Sid once wanted it to. Even if Geno showed up at his door tomorrow to love Sid the way Sid loved him, there would be other hearts broken instead of Sid’s, a mess that was never part of what Sid dreamed about.

Besides, maybe his heart could never be unbroken by this fictional Geno, because nothing could erase the years of hollow, aching hurt that Sid has already let perturb him. Geno’s soul is the kind that deserves infinite affection, so Sid will always have that for him, but maybe it’s time Sid accepts that other people will be Geno’s main providers in that sense. And then in turn Sid can stop torturing himself with the idea that Geno is the happy ending he doesn’t get.

\---

In March, the Philadelphia weather is even worse than it was last time the Penguins played at Wells Fargo, less cold but more rainy. However, this time it doesn’t have any bearing on Sidney’s mood. He feels calm. They play a good game. It’s close until well into the second period, at which point Sid makes a tight pass to Shears, who buries it backdoor to break the tie. The Penguins kind of run away with it after that. It’s a gratifying victory, seeing as it’s their third win over the Flyers out of three games played against them this season.

It’s quick to deal with the media, shower, and change back into his suit. He knows Giroux is doing the same somewhere on the other side of the building. He’d looked particularly sour heading off of the ice, and Sid hopes he’s not mad enough to forgo their new arrangement already; after all, Sid’s come prepared this time. They have a night in Philly before they leave to play the Leafs in Toronto, and there are some travel packets of lube and condoms in his bag. He takes one of each and moves them to his jacket pocket while it’s on his mind and no one’s looking, because the less time they waste fumbling around, the better.

As he’s stepping outside into the rain, he pulls out his phone to text Giroux and see if he wants to meet Sid at the hotel. That’s probably the best option, because then Sid can ride the bus back with all the rest and avoid suspicion. But when he opens his messages, there’s one waiting for him that just says _parking lot d_.

He stops mid-stride to orient himself. Phil almost runs straight into his back. “Sid!” Geno’s distinct accent comes from behind him, and when Sid turns to look, he and Phil are wearing twin disgruntled expressions. Geno taps his umbrella against Sid’s a couple times, like a reprimand. “Cold, Sid. Keep walking, bus right there.”

He’s right, but Sid has new directions. “Actually, I think I gotta go meet up with someone.”

Geno and Phil’s eyebrows peak at the same time. For two people with such demonstrably different appearances, they’re kind of weirding Sid out with how alike they look at the moment. “And who could that be?” Phil asks.

“A—” _friend_ , Sid starts to say, but he still isn’t sure if that’s accurate. “Someone,” he finishes even more vaguely and guiltily.

“Oh, we understand,” Geno lilts, grin playing at his lips. Sid doubts he understands fully, and that thought puts a pang in his stomach.

He shakes it off. He’s got nothing to be ashamed of. “Yeah, so…see you later,” he rushes out, then peels out of line to go find Parking Lot D.

“See you _tomorrow_ ,” Phil specifies for him. Sid doesn’t bother mentioning that it’s not like that, doesn’t say that he still firmly plans to sleep in his hotel bed, alone. There’s no point in getting defensive about it, since Phil likely won’t see him until the next morning in any case. “Tell ‘im we say hi!” Phil calls to Sid’s retreating back, knowing that the entire team will hear.

Sid wonders what Phil would say if he knew exactly which ‘him’ Sid was going to see.

Fortunately, he doesn’t have to wander around long or ask anyone for directions. There’s a giant sign that says _Parking Lot D_ just aways around the arena, and Sid has barely set foot in it when an expensive SUV pulls up beside him.

The tinted window cracks just enough to reveal Giroux’s ginger hair and blue-green eyes. “Get in the car,” he instructs Sid. The rain is getting stronger so he gives no further orders before he rolls the window back up.

Sid sighs, but rounds the car to the passenger’s side and gets in without complaint, dropping his umbrella and bag at his feet. “Hi,” he says into the silence.

“Hi,” Giroux repeats, then starts driving.

There’s nothing hostile in his tone, but Sid knows that it’s probably a near thing. He doesn’t say “good game” or anything similar, because if Giroux is already feeling pissy after the loss, that’ll set him off.

Giroux seems to recognize the same danger, so he turns on the radio. He keeps driving, and neither of them says anything. Sid thinks briefly that he has no idea where they’re going; Giroux could be taking him to a far-off place to murder him, for all he knows. Of course, that’s not what happens. They pull into the parking garage of a tall complex across the street from a little park, and Giroux herds him into an elevator.

The tension cracks as they ascend. Giroux takes a deep breath and leans back on the elevator wall, lets it out. He’s still quiet, but his eyes slip down Sid’s figure as if he’s been keeping himself from appreciating it until now. Sid knows he’s damp enough for his suit to be clinging.

He steps closer to Giroux, raising a hand to his tie and trying to appear more confident than he is. “You look good,” Sid confesses, realizing that it’s true as he says the words. Giroux’s own suit fits him well, legs lean and shoulders strong. His hair and beard are short, groomed now like they have been for the last couple of years. It’s far off from the wild curls and missing-tooth charm of years past, which reminds Sid of their growing age, but he looks genuinely handsome like this.

Giroux visibly swallows. He’s looking at Sid like…like he hates how much he likes what he sees. It makes Sidney’s face heat from some odd combination of irritation and arousal. Giroux pushes up off the wall into Sid’s space, and for a second Sid thinks that maybe they’ll go at it right there in the elevator, but as soon as he’s thought it the bell dings and the doors slide open.

What lies outside is an imitation of a hallway. There’s only one other door and it clearly leads to Giroux’s high-rise condo, the penthouse. Sid reaches it first, half to have space to catch his breath and half because he hasn’t thought about how Giroux will need to work the key into the lock from behind him.

He makes a show of it, too. He can’t just wait for Sid to move out of the way, he comes right up behind Sid and pushes against his back, loops an arm around his waist to pull Sid’s body into his. And Sid lets him. Despite their lack of a height difference, Sid has at least twenty pounds on Giroux, easy. He could muscle him off, turn the momentum of this whole thing around and take control.

Instead he lets Giroux nose into that spot where Sid’s nape meets his shirt collar. “Can you just…” Giroux breathes out. “I’m gonna…”

Sid thinks back to the lube in his pocket. He was planning to use it on Giroux, but there’s a hard dick against his ass now and it’s been a long five weeks.

“Inside,” is Sid’s only demand.

They do make it in the front door, but they don’t make it any farther than that. Giroux fucks him right there in the entryway on all fours. It’s urgent, desperate, but Giroux still takes the time to lay his coat dry side up on the floor to protect their knees. Sid comes all over the satin lining.

Giroux gripes about his dry cleaning bill while he’s pulling out, so Sid peels the condom off his dick and finishes him off in his mouth to divert his focus. It’s pretty effective.

When Sid tunes back in to their surroundings, he can hear Giroux’s dogs snuffling from wherever they’re penned up. Giroux mumbles a curse and stands, gathering his clothes off the floor as he goes down the hall to let them out. Sid struggles to stand himself, rubbing a hand at the back of his neck where he can almost still feel Giroux’s breath. He’s pondering whether he should just call a cab now or hover until they’re ready for a second round when an extraordinarily fluffy puppy comes bounding around the corner to him.

“That’s Charlie, he likes the attention,” Giroux says as he reappears, trailed by an older and larger dog of what looks to be the same breed. “And this is Harvey.”

Charlie is standing on his little hind legs and yipping at Sid in introduction. Harvey seems like he could care less, and lies down at Giroux’s feet. They’re just pets, but it’s a little more of Giroux’s real, personal life than Sid needs to be exposed to. “I should get going,” he announces. He needs to get back to the hotel and wash up, and the weather’s turning worse by the second if the howl of the wind outside is anything to gauge by.

“Sure,” Giroux shrugs easily, face blank. “I’m not pressed for any quality time with you,” he adds on, an unnecessary statement if Sid’s ever heard one. Then Giroux’s phone chirps and he turns it over to glance at the screen. “Uh, flash flood warning though.” Sid looks toward the windows, noticing for the first time that on the other side of Giroux’s living room there are floor-to-ceiling glass walls. He’d be alarmed, except no one could have seen them having sex because visibility is so poor with the rain coming down as hard as it is.

Sid knows it’s rude to look over someone’s shoulder at their phone, but he just has to see the flood warning for himself, make sure it’s not an ill-timed joke. It isn’t. Giroux opens up the Uber app, and Sid can see that none are available.

“Well,” Sid says, shoulders slumping, “I can walk.”

Giroux pulls off an eye-roll of epic proportions. “Fine, drown then.” Sid falters, but Giroux continues before he can even get a word out. “You’re unbelievable, we can wait it out. I have guest rooms, go shower and shit.”

So Sid does, because there’s nothing else for it. He picks his bag up and totes it down the hall. He passes by a room that’s lived-in enough to be Giroux’s and stops at one with decor plain enough to be a guest room. He bemusedly goes through the motions of showering and changing into the sweats he has on hand, and when he emerges Giroux is in the kitchen looking clean and warm himself in a worn tee and boxers with a blanket draped over his shoulders. He’s fussing around with something in a pan, and when Sid comes up next to him, he can see that it’s grilled cheese.

“Oh,” says Sid, stomach grumbling hopefully. “I forgot about that whole gimmick.”

Giroux huffs, but his lips quirk as he’s watching the pan. “It’s not a gimmick, it’s my life. I make the best grilled cheese, and if you want some then you’ll be nice to me.”

“I’m nice,” Sid declares.

“Are you nice to me, though?”

That bears considering. Sid settles on, “No less nice than you are to me.”

Giroux wields his spatula threateningly close to Sid’s face. “Dinner says you could stand to be nicer.”

“Deal.”

“There we go,” Giroux concedes, and pulls a plate down from a cabinet to dish the grilled cheese onto. He hands it to Sid, then starts another one for himself.

Sidney tries to think of what to say next, now that he’s stuck here at least until the storm calms down. He and Giroux had hung out in Prague a fair bit and it’d been generally enjoyable, but there were always other people around. They’ve never really spent time just the two of them, discounting sex.

“There’s Netflix on that TV,” Giroux mentions like he’d been thinking along similar lines. He nods toward the huge flat-screen in front of the couch.

It’s as good a suggestion as any. Sid takes his plate and plops down on the sofa, Giroux following soon after and sitting down a safe distance away. He spreads his blanket out so Sid can share, but they don’t touch underneath. Harvey and Charlie trot out to sprawl at their feet.

Next, Giroux spends at least fifteen minutes tooling around the main menu and making zero decisions. It’s long enough for Sid to finish his entire sandwich, so he steals the remote out of pure exasperation. “I’ll give you three options, and you choose from those.”

“Fine, I guess,” he gets as a response, so Sid makes his list of selections.

“A tennis documentary, an exposé on the fast food industry, and a historical short film? _Those_ are your picks?” complains Giroux. “You’re a caricature of yourself, and you wanna talk about my grilled cheese?”

“This sounds like your fault,” Sid counters. “It all could’ve been avoided if you hadn’t taken forever to decide.”

Giroux heaves a sigh, yet hits play on _Maria Sharapova: The Point_ without further comment.

Predictably, he’s fast asleep before the introduction is even over. His head droops heavily onto Sid’s shoulder around the time Maria Sharapova is halfway through detailing exactly why she failed her drug test at the 2016 Australian Open.

Sid glances down at him. He looks soft, kind of small the way he’s curled toward Sid. His eyelids are creaseless shut, lips parted. Sid notices for the first time that they still haven’t kissed. The space between them has evaporated, and the pitter-patter of light rain on the windows narrates his rest. Maybe the weather’s let up outside, maybe cabs are running again. Maybe Sid could leave now.

But maybe not. Sid carefully extracts his arm from under Claude’s sleeping weight and puts it over the back of the sofa around him, just— just because.

\---

Claude sleeps through the night like that. Sidney stays awake for a long time, listening to Claude’s breath go in and out with the storm.

\---

In the morning, Sid’s not sure whether he’s slept at all. It feels physically impossible that he didn’t, but he also can’t think which time he closed his eyes that he didn’t open them a few minutes later.

Claude eventually blinks awake too. As he yawns, he shifts around enough to definitely notice Sid’s arm at his shoulders, but he doesn’t comment. He throws the blanket all onto Sid and wanders off down the hall, presumably to take a piss.

The sun is coming in forcefully through the glass wall when he returns. “How was the movie?” he asks Sid wryly.

“Not exciting,” Sid acknowledges. At least, not exciting enough for Sid to pay any attention to it. “I gotta get back to catch the bus soon.”

Claude nods, then disappears briefly to the guest room and comes out with Sid’s bag. Sid stands to take it from him, fumbles his sneakers out from inside it and slips them on. By the time he’s ready to go, Claude’s mumbling is audible from the kitchen area, and Sid looks up to realize that Claude is calling him a cab.

Sid watches him. He’s leaning up against the kitchen island, phone in hand against his ear. The cab company must put him on hold for awhile, because he falls silent. His eyes dart over to meet Sid’s, then away. Back once more, away once more.

“Why are you looking at me weird?” Sid bursts.

Claude’s eyebrows shoot up and a real, surprised laugh bubbles out of his mouth. “You were looking at me!”

Sid shakes his head, smiling. This whole thing has been odd, but…not bad. When he finally goes downstairs to meet his cab, he realizes he forgot his suit, which he’d left drying in the guest suite bathroom. _Oh well_ , he thinks. He’ll get it next time.

\---

Sid and Taylor try to talk on the phone as often as is feasible. It’s mostly at Sid’s insistence; their age difference combined with his job means he’s overprotective one moment and distant the next, and he knows Taylor kind of just wants to finish school and play hockey and live a normal life without her big brother bothering her all the time, but he gets worried about missing out on it all. And it’s so rare that they see each other throughout the year, mostly just holidays and playoffs when the Penguins go deep and she can make it after her semester finishes. So Sid calls whenever he can.

“Sid,” Taylor grumbles on the other end of the line. “It’s seven in the morning here.”

“Oh, sorry,” he says, even though he already knew that and called anyway. “What are you up to?”

“I’m not up to anything, I’m not even physically up from bed,” she grouses. “What are _you_ up to?”

Sid pushes the power button on his blender. “I’m making a smoothie.”

“Yes, I can hear that, ow. This is working better than my alarms most days.”

“I’m glad to have a hand in getting you to class on time, then. What all do you have today?”

He sips at his smoothie and listens to her talk about her courses and midterms, hockey practice and balancing her schedule. She’s a senior this year, and she’s decided that hockey is ending for her along with school. She’s going to get a job, work in public relations. Sid thinks she’ll be successful at whatever she wants to do; he’s taken a pretty hands-off approach with her hockey, has never wanted to put any pressure on her to play or not play. She’s picked up on this by now, because they don’t talk about hockey that much when it’s not in direct relation to their schedules. Sid is fine with that, seeing as it’s most of what he and his dad talk about and that’s quite enough for him.

However, occasionally that means she throws out questions in passing that Sid isn’t prepared for. “Are you seeing anyone?” Taylor asks this time.

She asks him that every so often. Sid doesn’t think she even really expects an answer anymore, because it’s always been no. It still is no.

But this time he hesitates. He hesitates long enough for Taylor to go, “Oh my god, are you actually dating?”

“No, no,” Sid gets out finally. “I’m not. You know how it is. I’m fine on my own.”

Taylor sighs in sympathy or vexation. “I don’t doubt that, Sid, I know you’re fine. I just think it wouldn’t be a crime for you to do something for yourself once in awhile. Something fun!”

Something fun. Does what he and Claude are doing count as something fun? It’s certainly not something serious, but it is something enjoyable. Sid truthfully isn’t sure if ‘fun’ is the right term. “Sure, Tay. I’ll get back to you on that.”

Later, when he’s in bed after an excruciating game against the Devils that they’d given up by one goal, Sid gets a text from Claude. It reads: _hey, tough loss tonight_. That prickles under his skin a tiny bit, because he doesn’t need a reminder. Before Sid can respond, another message comes in. _we're in ny. just had to leave the bar cause rangers fans next to us r mad we beat them. loudly complimenting ur play was their revenge._

_That must have been terrible for you to go through_ , Sid texts back.

_eh,_ Claude sends. _got me thinking about you_.

Hmm. Sid might have an idea of where this is going now. He looks around himself. He already happens to be in bed, it’s dark. It’s almost midnight and he’s not wearing anything but his underwear. A distraction like this, it would beat lying around losing sleep over a dumb loss.

_Thinking about me how?_ Sid buys in. _Please use detail._

Yeah, he thinks to himself. This is fun.

\---

They play the Flyers in Pittsburgh just a few days after. It’s bound to be a rough one. Playoffs aren’t far on the horizon, and that’s tangible in the dressing room.

But they come out with the win again, somehow. It’s especially good at home, with the fans at PPG as pumped as they are, it finally feels like winning in good company. They’ve taken all four games against the Flyers this season, and it’s looking more likely every day that they’ll face each other in the first round of playoffs, seeing as the Caps are still on a winning streak and the Blue Jackets are dropping a few here and there.

At the same time, though, Sid is more conscious than ever of the fact that Claude is on the other end of the ice, the losing side of Sid’s wins. He’s probably fuming. Sid has a house, a huge bed, and hours of time for them to do whatever they want on it, but all of that means nothing if Claude is pissed off enough to pass it all up. Sid would, if it were him.

He gets nervous to check his phone afterward. He’s unsure whether it would be worse to have a message from Claude that says he’s not coming, or nothing at all.

Despite the worrying, it turns out that once Sid has sifted through the usual post-win congratulatory texts from family and friends, he does get one from Claude: _should I be a good sport and still see you?_

It’s selfish, but Sid really wants him to. Regular season is rapidly hurtling toward an end, and if they don’t come up against each other in playoffs then it’ll be months before they see each other again, more than a whole summer. It’s impossible to know for sure. And with the expanse of the off-season looming ahead of them, maybe Claude will find someone else to mess around with, and Sid will be obsolete to him. He wants to have Claude in his bed at least once before that happens.

_Come by the dressing room_ , he texts. He doesn’t believe Claude actually will, but it’s something to indicate that Sid wants to see him, even if Claude’s just going to respond with some shit about how Sid can damn well come by the _visitors’_ dressing room.

Claude doesn’t do what Sid expects him to do—he actually does show up to the dressing room. He can’t come inside, but he waits for Sid outside in the hall, in plain view of every single one of Sid’s teammates that walks out the door ahead of him. Some of them don’t notice; some of them notice but ignore him; some of them, like Tanger, step forward and ask him what he thinks he’s doing there.

“Just here for Sid,” Claude says, hardly sparing Tanger a glance and looking straight at Sid. Sid’s frozen in place, because he didn’t think Claude would actually throw himself head first into a pool of waiting sharks just because Sid asked, and if that doesn’t prove that Claude wants to see Sid despite the loss, despite everything, then Sid doesn’t know what does.

Nothing bad or dramatic happens. “It’s fine,” Sid says to call off Tanger, so no one gives Claude any shit as they all pass him by. The point is, they could have, and Claude came anyway.

Sidney remembers 2012. Sidney remembers getting more frustrated than he’d ever been before. He remembers hacking at everything orange he saw, whether it was a goalie’s hand or Jake Voracek’s glove or Claude’s wrists, but that was all just _part of hockey_. He remembers the image he’d had of Claude as someone so psychotic and ridiculous and obnoxious, this little rat who would bark senseless shit on the ice and to the media, telling reporters that Sid was some sort of hypocrite but never saying it to his face. Cowardly.

They’ve both grown up since then, but. Perhaps Claude is braver than Sid ever gave him credit for.

That night, Sidney takes him home. He brings Claude off three times, slowly and diligently over the course of a whole night: once with his hands, once with his mouth, and once with his cock so deep inside him he thinks he might die from it, might die from the lock of Claude’s legs around his waist. He’s learning Claude’s body now. He knows that Claude’s nipples are more sensitive than his own and that Claude’s prostate is higher up than normal, enough that Sid can just barely get it with his middle finger. He knows what sounds Claude will make from the slow drag of Sid inside him.

Sid commits these things to memory as he discovers them. There’s no telling when he’ll have them next.

When Sid shows up to practice the following day, Tanger watches him like a hawk. Sid knows there are bruises on his shoulder where Claude sank his teeth as Sid was pushing into him, and Tanger sees them too. Sid watches him visibly put the pieces together. He’s not surprised at Tanger’s yank on his elbow as they’re leaving the rink.

“So, sorry to ambush you,” Tanger starts, not looking sorry at all, “but were you planning on telling anyone you’re fraternizing with the enemy?”

Denying it would probably be useless. “Not really,” Sid confesses, slapping Tanger’s hands away as he’s trying to poke the spot under Sid’s shirt where his marks bloomed. “I’m playing the same, aren’t I? So it’s not important.”

“You play the same, yeah, but you don’t act the same. Disappearing after games, having ‘people’ to see in Philly, _texting_ someone all the time?” That’s an exaggeration. Sid doesn’t text Claude unless they’re meeting up, other than a couple weeks ago when he found an old Deadspin article ripping that Maria Sharapova movie to shreds and had to send it to Claude. “What you do is your business, but is it really Giroux you’ve been dating?” 

Now _that_ warrants a swift denial. Sid doesn’t need anyone getting the wrong idea. “Woah, there. We’re not dating, it’s completely casual.”

Tanger’s face does something funny and unintelligible. “Then you’re what, fuckbuddies?” he asks like it pains him to utter the words. “We’re thirty years old, Sid.”

Sid’s not sure what one has to do with the other, but ‘fuckbuddies’ seems like too crass a title anyway. “He’s my consistent partner,” Sid informs Tanger.

But it only makes Tanger’s features scrunch up even more. “Your _what_?” he almost squeaks.

Sid heaves a breath. “Look, I don’t need to argue about who I sleep with when it doesn’t affect my game and there’s no cause for concern.”

“I’m not trying to argue,” says Tanger. “I’m your friend. I just want to make sure you know what you're doing.”

That’s fair. Sid wonders whether it would be honest to claim that he does. It’s worked out so far, though. “I’ll be okay,” he promises. And he will, one way or another.

Sid spends the following days sick with the fervent hope that they both will and won’t face the Flyers first thing in playoffs. He hopes they will play Philly because then he’ll have to spend less time worrying about the immediate future of his thing with Claude; he’d see him in just a couple weeks, determine if they’ll start up again next season or just leave it be, fuck one last time then say it’s been a good run but it’s no longer necessary. At the same time he hopes they won’t play Philly because he knows what it’s like seeing orange across the ice with the Stanley Cup on the line, and he’s not confident that he and Claude could stand to even look at each other with that kind of emotion brewing, much less have sex, or communicate whether they’re going to keep having sex.

Soon enough, it becomes unavoidable. Regular season finishes out and the Penguins’ Round 1 match-up is, of course, the Flyers. Sid decides he’s looking forward to it despite his trepidation. He knows that they can beat the Flyers.

Claude texts him as Game 1 approaches to _get ready cause i'm comin for you_. Sid has to laugh at that for the double meaning. He has no doubt that Claude means it both ways, means to take Sid to task on the ice and take him to bed afterward. Sid knows they won’t have much time, can’t afford any distractions. But it’ll be enough, until one team comes out victorious and they can talk.

\---

But then the Penguins win. They don’t just win, they demolish 7-0, they thoroughly humiliate the Flyers. Sid wins, and then Sid hears nothing from Claude.

Still he goes home and thinks it’s vaguely possible Claude will just come over without texting beforehand. Sure, he’s received no message asking for his address, but Claude has been there once before and maybe he remembers. They’re set in this now, it’s a routine, and Sid doesn’t like to break those.

Hours pass, and Claude remains a no-show.

And maybe Sid should say something, give him a call to check in, but the silence from his phone feels purposeful and loud. It’s fine. This…this is the best choice. It was always temporary anyway, and it makes the most sense to cut things off now so that their focus can remain where it needs to be.

The Flyers play desperate and loose and heated, but they lose the series anyway. Every time Claude looks at Sidney, he turns away a moment later.

“I thought he hit him high,” Sid tells the journalists after Claude collides with Tanger so hard Tanger’s head snaps back sickeningly. “I’m sure the league will look at it, but I thought it was a pretty high hit.” He’s aware that Claude will hear about what he says, and he feels just like Claude must have felt six years ago when he said, “Those are from Crosby,” about his broken wrists.

When it’s all over with, he’s angry and he’s sad, that old sinking, losing feeling in his stomach despite the win. He casts aside the sadness because it’s senseless, futile, and confusing.

He’ll stick with being mad; anger directed at Claude, at least, is familiar.

They go on to drop Round 2 to the Capitals. Sid’s phone stays silent.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Some slightly more spoiler-y, mild warnings: At one point a character exhibits slightly manipulative behavior with the end goal being sex. To me, it stays pretty safely in the lane of just harmless flirting, but to some it may read differently. There is also description of a previous off-screen sexual encounter that a character regretted. Additionally, characters have a fair amount of unprotected oral sex in this. Stay safe in real life, kids! Let me know if you read this and you think there's any other content you think I should warn for! Always happy to listen.
> 
> Anyway, thanks for reading this! Below are your rewards:
> 
> [Here](https://youtu.be/D1JzwSTMeM4?t=240) is Sid holding a parrot, trying on a pirate hat, and making fun of Tanger at ASG. [Here's](https://youtu.be/X9sGckqMXa8?t=270) Charlie crashing one of Claude's interviews, because he "likes the attention." Also the [article](https://deadspin.com/maria-sharapova-made-an-hour-long-commercial-and-it-suc-1796343109) about the Maria Sharapova movie, which is real. [Here's](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yMBx4qY2Rsg) bratty Sid (my favorite!) being a menace during the 2012 Flyers/Penguins match-up. Click [here](https://www.post-gazette.com/sports/penguins/2018/04/13/Sidney-Crosby-not-pleased-with-Claude-Giroux-hit/stories/201804130182) for the quote from Sid about Claude hitting Tanger, and [here](https://www.sportsnet.ca/hockey/nhl/claude-giroux-sidney-crosby-wrist-injury-flyers-penguins/) for Claude insisting that Sid fractured his wrists in 2012.
> 
> The second part of this is pretty much already written. I'll probably post it next week, after I'm done having feelings about the impending Penguins/Flyers game. In the meantime, come talk to me on tumblr, I'm [quickxotic](http://quickxotic.tumblr.com/)!


	2. Part 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi guys, I'm back! Thanks again so much to my betas [yeswayappianway](https://archiveofourown.org/users/yeswayappianway/) and Liv! You have been truly indispensable to the quality of this story.
> 
> This chapter includes a fictional preseason game between the Penguins and the Flyers, who generally don't actually play each other in the preseason. It's fictional, just like, you know, the entirety of this story.
> 
> Before you start Part 2, please note this brief warning: there is a section toward the back half of Part 2 in which a character has to remove themselves from a sexual encounter because they change their mind about wanting to partake. This goes fine for them and there are no obstructions to their exit.

Sid spends the first few weeks of summer still angry. He’s not angry at anyone in particular, except for himself. Sid’s done as much playoff losing in his career as he’s done winning, so he’s aware that it’s not singularly his fault. It’s so spectacularly difficult to be the sole winner among sixteen teams that all want to win this one thing more than they’ve ever wanted anything in their lives, all tired of hearing ‘there’s always next year’ every single year.

But it’s also possible that Sid has been on top of the world for two years straight and let himself forget the burning, sickening feeling of being _not quite good enough_. At least in the hockey sense.

Sid’s mad that they couldn’t beat the team they’d handled so easily every other year, and that he didn’t score more, and that he has to watch Alexander Ovechkin’s big head fall back in exultation as he’s staring up at the Stanley Cup that isn’t Sid’s anymore. And yeah, he’s a little peeved that he hasn’t spoken to Claude in at least a month, and likely won’t for the foreseeable future. But that’s the least of his grievances, honestly. It’s not like they talked that much to begin with.

Sid huffs from his garage gym, finally putting up a photo of Ovi on the wall next to all the other Cup-winning captains of years’ past that he hangs where he can’t avoid staring at them, just to keep himself hungry. He knows this one will serve its purpose particularly well.

But as the weeks continue to tick by and the long days of July creep over Nova Scotia, his irritation fades. Taylor comes to visit home, and Nate’s around as well. The pair of them are like partners in crime, hilarious to watch with their matching mischief and twin compulsion to trick Sid into leaving the house for activities other than errands and training.

“Can’t you set me up with a hockey player?” Taylor asks Sid at one point, when the three of them are golfing.

“Sure,” Sid says. “I can set you up with Nathan MacKinnon.”

Nate squawks indignantly and goes, “Dude, I have a girlfriend!” at the same time as Taylor groans, “Not _him_!” and then Nate’s going, “Hold up, you’d be _lucky_ —” and then Sid’s driving off in the golf cart without them.

On the whole, things are just fine.

Which is why it’s particularly disconcerting when Sid answers his front door halfway through summer, and it’s Claude on the other side.

“Claude,” Sidney observes, like narration.

“Got it in one,” Claude says, because he’s an asshole. Despite that, he also looks a little bit self-conscious, as if he has the guts to show up randomly at Sid’s house in Nova Scotia but doesn’t have the wherewithal to look Sid in the face as he does it. Just in case Sid is going to slam the door closed on him. His eyes dart up and to the side, fixing on Sid’s front porchlight.

Sid’s first question is “How do you know where I live?” rather than _what are you doing here?_ Because if his address is on the internet then he’s lucky it’s just Claude on his property.

“You’d be amazed what’s possible when you’re handy with Google Maps,” Claude answers, but Sid thinks that’s probably bullshit designed to mess with his head. Claude has played with guys that have been to Sid’s house. Sid doesn’t know which one of them told Claude where to go, doesn’t want to think about who he asked or what excuse he used for it.

“I don’t wanna know,” Sid decides aloud. “Uh, come in, I guess?”

Claude doesn’t have a bag on him. Maybe there’s one in the rental car in Sid’s driveway, or maybe he’ll be leaving soon enough not to need one. He’s in a white tee and jeans, black cap backwards on his head. He looks around Sid’s living room like he’s finding just what he expected. Then he looks at Sid, and Sid has to come face-to-face with Claude standing in the middle of his den, backlit by the mid-morning sun through Sid’s open deck doors, no explanation for himself.

It’s on the tip of his tongue to ask, but Claude steps back to him in the same moment, driving him up against the wall. “What?” is all Sid’s able to get out before Claude carefully lowers himself down, knees meeting Sid’s carpet one at a time.

He raises an eyebrow up at Sid, like _okay if I’m down here?_ If that’s the plan, Sid’s with it, but is it weird for him to be nervous? Claude’s never blown him before and Sid has had absolutely no time to prepare mentally. He’s flushed like someone turned the thermostat up without warning him, and he thinks he might start sweating even though he was fine two minutes ago.

Two minutes ago, Claude on his knees here in Sid’s house would have sounded more like a fever dream than a potential reality.

His whiplash over the whole thing is overwhelming, but Sid really hopes his body is about to get with the program, because he wants to let this happen. It’s a good thing that Claude is taking it slow now, counteracting the suddenness with which he took to the floor. He’s got one hand coming up Sid’s thigh and the other looping the drawstring of Sid’s sweats around his finger like it’s a girl’s strand of hair, like he’s flirting. When he reaches Sid’s waistband, he rolls it down very deliberately, until it fits snug below Sid’s thickening cock.

Claude ignores the length of Sid’s growing erection for a second, ducking in to nose at the base. Sid hopes it all, like, smells fine down there. He can’t think of a reason why it wouldn’t, but. Claude tugs at his pubic hair a little, and Christ, Sid didn’t know that could feel nice.

And then he’s mouthing up the side, lips and tongue dragging wet heat all over until Sid is really hard for it. Sid is pretty sure he’s losing feeling in his toes, and he feels like an idiot just standing there staring down at this, but he’s against the wall and there isn’t anything he can hold onto for purchase. Claude takes him in and sucks on the head, and it feels so good Sid’s knees threaten to buckle. It’s the first time Sid wishes Claude still had his long hair, so he could thread his fingers through it. Instead, he swats at the brim of Claude’s cap in frustration when he pulls off, knocking it from his head. “Seriously? What’s that for?” Claude whines, but he gets his mouth back around Sid and takes him deeper before there’s time to reply.

Just as well. Sid has no clue what he would have said anyway.

Claude keeps sucking him slow and dirty. Sid finally cups a hand at the back of Claude’s neck, so he feels the vibration when Claude pops off again to clear his throat. He looks up at Sid to ask, “Feel good?” and he says it lightly enough that Sid thinks he’s not just fishing for gratuitous compliments, he genuinely wants to make sure Sid likes it.

“Yeah, that’s—” Claude is tonguing his slit now, and Sid can’t even come up with a word. _Good_ doesn’t really sum up the full experience of answering a knock on the door thinking it’s a package delivery or something, laying eyes on Claude for the first time in months, and then immediately getting his dick exceptionally sucked. “Oh, fuck,” is about the only way to describe how Claude is working for it, throat fluttering around more of Sid’s cock every time he moves in.

It’s almost unfair, the way Claude’s been able to just stride in and flip Sid’s world upside down. The familiar feeling of an oncoming orgasm is building low in Sid’s stomach, his muscles tensing. “I’m gonna come,” he finally has to choke out. Claude draws back until the full attention of his mouth is on the sensitive head of Sid’s dick, sucking hard. He stays there waiting for it, and all Sid has to do is take his shaft in hand and squeeze up, coax it out of himself and onto Claude’s tongue. Claude retreats with everything, and Sid raptly watches his Adam’s apple bob as he swallows a couple times.

“There you go,” Claude says after he catches his breath. He wipes the excess spit from his mouth with one hand while the other presses in between his own legs. He exhales heavily, and Sid realizes he must not have touched himself through any of that.

Sid’s viewpoint suddenly has major flaws. “Up on the couch,” he directs Claude. As Claude scrambles up from the floor, Sid tucks himself back into his sweats, his cock still wet where Claude’s mouth has been. _Fuck._

“I don’t need—” Claude starts to argue just to be contrarian, but the way he’s tenting his jeans argues otherwise. He shuts his mouth and gets on the couch, head resting against the arm and legs splayed out before him. He looks ready to have Sid on top of him.

But that’s not what Sid wants. Sid follows him to the middle of the living room, but he takes a seat on the sofa opposite Claude, across the coffee table. Claude starts to sit up again, drawn-down eyebrows making his confusion obvious. “Lie back,” Sid says. “Show me.”

What Sid wants is to _study_. He remembers the first time he ever touched Claude back in that grimy public restroom, how Claude had taken Sid’s hand and adjusted his grip to be exactly what he wanted, and Sid hadn’t paid any fucking attention, so sure that the way to win with Claude wasn’t something he needed to keep track of because this would be one and done.

Now, Claude could be gone just as quickly, walk right back out Sid’s front door once he has his. But if he doesn’t, Sid is going to make sure it’s worth his while. And it’d be a blatant lie to say that Sid doesn’t know how to please Claude, but it’s true to say that Sid doesn’t know how Claude pleases himself.

“What, you want me to perform for you?” Claude asks skeptically. Sid supposes that’s fair, because although Claude does sometimes have a flair for the dramatic, it’s never on purpose or fake, never put on. He gets shy more than people realize, but Sid doesn’t want him to feel that way now.

“Not perform,” Sid corrects. “Demonstrate. You’ve always wanted to show me a thing or two, haven’t you?”

Claude’s lips quirk up at that, and Sid knows then that he’ll do it. His shirt comes over his head, and he throws it into Sid’s face, so Sid barely catches any of him kicking off his jeans. Once they’re off along with his underwear, Claude plants one foot up on the couch cushions, his other leg spilling over the side. The view is obscene, thick erection curving up toward his stomach. Claude wraps a hand around it and gives it a slow stroke from root to tip, swiping his thumb over the top when he gets there. His eyelids fall shut and his lips part on a heavy breath.

Sid clenches a hand in the blue velour he’s sitting on, the same material Claude’s spread out on across from him. He’ll have this image burned into the back of his mind for a long time. When his parents sit here at Christmas, when his buddies come in for lunch after fishing, he’ll think of Claude laid out bare on that couch, head tipped back as he touches himself.

Sid wants to tell him so, but every time the words rise up, he chokes on them.

Claude is fisting his cock faster now. “Sid,” he sighs, like that’s who’s doing this to him.

“Are you close?” Sid demands wildly. He feels simultaneously like he has all and none of the power here, eyes glued to Claude’s leaking dick disappearing behind his hand and revealing itself again.

“ _Yeah_ ,” Claude absolutely groans.

It’s all Sid can do not to get up, move over there and finish Claude off himself. “Then let me see,” he says, and he could be begging or commanding.

Claude does. He shoots all up his abs and is left gasping by it.

Sid’s chest is heaving as well, cock stirring again in his sweats. He ignores it to stand shakily and grab a clean dishrag that doesn’t matter from the kitchen, wet it with warm water and bring it back. Only then does he let himself sit on the same couch where Claude is just opening his eyes again.

Claude watches Sid studiously clean him up in silence. The weighty hesitance from Sid’s front doorway is returning to the room, and it takes Claude so long to ask, “Are you gonna let me stay, then?”

So he is staying, at least for today. Sid is still unsure what Claude’s purpose there is, but he allows, “Yes. I…” and then he pauses, thinks. Claude is looking at him like there might be more to the reply, and he recalls what Claude had said on that night Sid got trapped in his condo by the storm. “I have guest rooms,” he echoes.

Claude blinks at him for a moment, but then nods nonchalantly and looks away. There’s no storm outside, nothing keeping them in. But Claude stays where he is.

\---

They while away the rest of the day doing various forms of nothing: watching TV, eating, lounging on Sid’s back deck. The kind of nothing the off-season should be for. Sid had already fit in his morning workout by the time Claude showed up, and he lets Claude use his gym in the evening while Sid makes them something simple for dinner. His dad had called and invited him over to eat with them, and Sid had to make hurried excuses about being really tired and needing to take care of some things around the house. Sid pokes at the chicken he has cooking, mind running away with the nightmare image of his parents dropping by unannounced and finding Claude Giroux in his living room.

He pulls his phone out of his pocket and opens a new message to Taylor, but wavers after that. It’s possible that no one will come by or need him for anything for the duration of...however long Claude will be here. But it’s not probable. If he doesn’t say anything, there’s a good chance someone in his family will turn up and catch them at a fiercely inconvenient moment and there’ll be a lot of explaining to do that Sid vehemently does not want to do. But if he does try to warn people off, it’s going to sound overly-vague and suspicious. He’s worried he’ll inadvertently prompt people to come looking by trying too hard to get them to stay away.

Still, he knows Taylor will do him the solid if he promises to explain later. He writes, _Will you do me a big favor?_

She writes back, _You’re not trying to con me into cleaning your fishing boat again, are you?_

Ugh, that was one time, three years ago. And he’d been busy. _No_ , he taps out, and adds the little cry face emoji. _I need you and Mom and Dad to avoid my place for a couple days. Nate and the guys and everyone too._

 _If you want me to wrangle both our parents and your friends, we’ll need to talk payment._ Then another text comes through. _I take payment in dollars or secrets. Secret 1: why are you being so shady???_

 _Can I choose the dollars option?_ Sid sends.

_I take that one back, you have so much money it’s practically lost its value. Now tell me what you’re hiding!!!_

Sid doesn’t think that’s how money works, but there’s no escaping what Taylor really wants to know. Plus, he supposes he does owe it to her seeing as they only have a limited amount of time together in Canada every summer, and here he is telling her not to come over. _I swear I’ll tell you when I see you. And I’ll let you know when it’s all clear around here._

He doesn’t check her response, seeing as Claude comes ambling into the kitchen, sniffing at the scent in the air. He’s still sweating in just gym shorts, no shirt, his chest a strange combination of ruddy from the exercise and tanned from the summer. “Smells good in here,” he comments idly.

“And you stink,” Sid informs him, peeling his own gaze away. “This is almost done, go shower and you can come eat.”

Claude leans up on the counter next to where Sid is very dutifully flipping chicken breasts. He leers, “But if we eat and then I shower, you could be in the shower with me.” And that actually could be an inspired idea. Sid has a huge shower, so it wouldn’t be that cramped, awkward shower sex that leaves you with mild injuries and major regrets.

“Fine,” Sid relents. “But you do actually have to wash yourself while we’re in there.”

\---

Sid strokes both of them off with one hand in the shower, steamy and wet and perfect in an uncomplicated way. As was probably inevitable, none of the guest rooms end up occupied that night. From Sid’s bathroom, it’s only a few steps to his bed, and between a flight, a workout, and two climaxes, Claude is wiped. It would just be fussy to make him trudge all the way out to his car, grab his duffle, and march back in to take up in a sterile cut-and-paste guest bedroom when Sid’s own generous bed is right there and would no doubt be warmer with Claude in it.

Sid is a good host.

He expects that he might have trouble falling asleep with Claude lying what feels like just a hair’s breadth away. Claude’s slipped into sleep just as easily as ever and Sid uses the opportunity to take an uninterrupted look at his face, slack and open. The only point of contact between them is where Claude’s toes are nudging Sid’s shin, but even just that kind of makes Sid feel like he’s too hot for the covers. He shoves them down, rolls over, and closes his eyes.

In the end, falling asleep isn’t that hard.

\---

When the sun wakes him in the morning, there’s no one on the other side of the sheets, but he can hear the clatter of someone out in the kitchen. Sid sits up, stretches, yawns. He has the vague certainty that he’d dreamt plenty last night, but can’t recall any images or sensations from it.

He puts on boxers and a shirt, then pads out into the kitchen to find Claude poking questioningly at his coffee maker. As he’s prodding another button, he looks over at Sid and nods. He doesn’t say _good morning_ , only “Why are there so many options on this thing?”

Sid goes to join him in front of it, peers at the little screen. “You pushed start for espresso but you’re trying to make drip coffee.” He pushes the right button and the machine whirs to life.

Claude throws him an unimpressed glance. Sid notices then that he’s wearing glasses, thick rectangular frames. He’d never known Claude needed them, but they look nice. Sid scratches at his own elbow, ignoring the discomfort he gets whenever he thinks for too long about how attractive Claude really is.

They eat breakfast and drink coffee in relative silence. Claude rinses out his plate and mug like he cares about being a good houseguest. “I was thinking ‘bout going for a run,” he says idly.

Sid nods. He never takes long runs himself if he can avoid it, but to each their own. “There are some good paths up on the north end of the lake, if you want.”

Claude takes his advice and heads out in that direction, after he changes and ditches the glasses. He’s gone for almost an hour, during which Sid tries to think of what to do with him when he gets back. They still have limited experience just...hanging out alone, and Sid’s not yet certain what it is that Claude’s doing here. It’s possible that he showed up just for the sake of a few good orgasms, but Sid is pretty sure that Claude could find someone else closer to home to hook up with easily. At least, that’s what Sid had assumed he was doing for the past two months.

Sid still hasn’t come to any conclusions when Claude returns, dripping sweat, but he doesn’t end up having to. Claude takes one look at Sid’s dock that extends outward over the lake from his back patio and says, “All that staring at the lake while I was sweating my ass off made me just want to jump in. You up for a swim?”

“You can go for it,” Sid tells him. “I just fish out there, so.”

“You won’t swim? It’s so hot out!”

“You just think that because you ran a few miles. It’s nice outside, look.” He opens up the French doors that separate his living room from his patio and strolls out.

Claude follows, holding a hand above his eyes and squinting into the brightness. “Yeah, I’m boiling, I’m goin’ in.” He strips off his shirt, drops his shorts, and suddenly he’s straight-up naked on Sid’s lakefront. Maybe this was a bad idea.

Claude never seems overly aware of his own nudity. He strides out onto Sid’s dock like he’s been there before, and then he dives cleanly off the edge of it. “Water’s nice,” he calls up to where Sid’s watching him.

“For sure,” Sid says. “Have fun with that.”

Claude rolls his eyes and flips up to float on his back for a moment. He’s a picture, toned chest and stomach peeking out from the water’s surface, soft cock just barely visible below it. The lake can’t be that warm, it stays significantly colder than the air outside on any given day, but the contentment Claude’s exuding is tempting Sid to join him a little bit.

Not that he’d say that.

Claude kicks himself back upright then, moves closer to Sid’s feet at the edge of the dock. “Okay, I’m done,” he declares, but there’s something false in his voice. He reaches a hand up for Sid, still treading with the other, and asks, “Help me up? It’s too high.” And oh, of course. He wants to pull one over on Sid and heave him into the lake as well.

“Nice try,” says Sid. “But that’s the oldest trick in the book.”

“Come on, this dock is literally level with my forehead right now, come _on_ ,” Claude complains.

“It’s called using your upper body strength,” Sid reasons back.

Claude scoffs. “Upper body strength, seriously? No, it’s called _you_ using your upper body strength. To pull me up.” He’s shaking his outstretched palm around now, as though that’s going to make Sid more likely to take it.

Sid knows Claude will keep being insistent until he wins, so Sid settles on something that’s halfway to a compromise but still robs Claude of any satisfaction: he just gets into the water himself, peeling his clothes off and sliding in with little fanfare.

“Boring,” Claude says under his breath. “It woulda been much funnier if you let me drag you in.”

Just as he suspected. Sid bites down on a grin, pushes nearer to Claude. His body’s submerged, so Sid just has to look at his face, his eyes. Water clings to his champagne eyelashes. He’s tanner than usual, from the summer. Sid wonders where else he’s been so far, because he doubts there’s that much sun just in Ottawa.

“Race you to the far shore,” Sid challenges. “3…2…”

Claude takes off before he even gets to 1. Just the way Sid had been planning to.

\---

Claude only won the race because he had a head start, but he brags about it after they get out as if it’d been pure skill. They dry off, and Claude sprawls out on a chaise lounge. Sid is betting he’ll be asleep and sunburning before too long. Sid's getting peckish, so he goes in to grab a snack, and when he comes back out Claude is snoring lightly, curled up on his side with one arm holding himself and one arm hanging off the edge of the chair.

Sid lets him nap, does some reading and some straightening up around the house until Claude wakes up, groggy, hungry, and pink across the bridge of his nose. They order in for an early dinner and take it out to the deck attached to Sid’s bedroom. It faces the sunset, one of the details that sold Sid on the house initially, back at nineteen years old.

Of course, the sun is just beginning to dip while they’re out there, seeing as they get such long summer days near the solstice. Claude’s feet are propped up on the little table where Sid usually puts food; Sid wishes he knew that not all furniture should be used as an ottoman, Jesus. But he looks comfortable there, and something about that restrains Sid’s compulsion to tell him where his feet shouldn’t go.

Sid shifts in his own chair. Claude is scrolling through something on his phone. Whatever he’s looking at makes him laugh quietly to himself. He seems at ease, Sid realizes. Like he’s not bothered by the fact that he’s in Sid’s hometown, in Sid’s house, for no fathomable reason.

Suddenly the entirety of his presence is even more confounding than it was when he first showed up.

“Do you have anything that you need to do up here?” Sid blurts.

Claude glances over at him. “Well, I should probably skate at some point,” he says uncertainly.

“I’ll take you to the rink after hours. But that’s not what I meant. Why…?” he starts, but he isn’t really sure how to finish the question. _Why did you come? Why aren’t you in Ontario, with anyone else but me?_

The chair Claude’s sitting in makes a blunt noise, scraping against the wood of the deck as he stands up from it and leans up against the matching railing. Sid stares at his back. “ _Crisse, tu m’achales_ ,” Claude mutters, and Sid knows that he’s just been called annoying. Boys in the Q had used the same words with him too many times to forget. “What, a guy can’t do what he feels like with his summer?” 

That explains nothing about what _exactly_ it is that Claude felt like doing with his summer. Sid can feel his nostrils expand with the breath he huffs out. Claude is still acting like he’s here incidentally, like he was just in the neighborhood. “You just didn’t say anything.”

Claude turns around to bark, “Yeah, I didn’t hear much from you either, Sid!” His eyes are flashing like he’s making some sort of accusation, as if the lack of communication had actually bothered him. Sid can’t imagine why it would have. Like, okay, Sid was maybe a little bothered too, but _Claude_ expressing frustration about it just doesn’t add up. He was the one who basically ditched Sid during playoffs.

Sid processes it all, scrubs a hand over his forehead, like it’ll ease the tension headache that’s abruptly started throbbing in his skull. He really didn’t think Claude wanted to hear from him. “I guess that’s true,” he says grudgingly, standing. He doesn’t have to deal with this right now, and it’d been a mistake to try. He can go hole up in another corner of the house, somewhere Claude isn’t.

Except then he looks back up, and Claude looks pissy, sure, but there’s something else there. His eyes are trained on Sid and they won’t fall away. He looks coiled to pounce, but cornered and wounded himself, an oxymoron visible on his body. Sid feels the strain of his own irritation loosen in realizing that Claude looks panicked and hurt. Sid still doesn’t know what he possibly could have done to cause that, but he didn’t mean to. Didn’t want to.

“What?” Sid prods. “What is it?”

“Look, this is…” Claude starts to say. His mouth pauses, struggling with whatever thought. For a moment it seems like he’s going to confess something. But then it’s overtaken by some steely determination, a resolve that hardens in his gaze before Sid’s very eyes.

Claude strides forward, takes Sid’s face in hand, and kisses him.

Sid almost doesn’t fully compute; he kisses back on instinct, by reflex. It’s far from gentle, but it’s not violent. It’s not rough, like they’ve been with each other before. It’s just firm, insistent.

Claude walks him back through the sliding door and into his own room. Sid has been kissed like this before, it’s the kind of making out that’s designed to lead to sex. Whatever Claude was going to say before is gone, washed away in the ripple of Sid’s sheets when they fall back on the bed together.

Claude never put a shirt back on, so it’s just Sid’s they have to get off before they get their shorts off too. Claude is on top of him, grinding a thigh over Sid’s hard-on. Sid can’t tell if Claude is using this as a distraction or if Sid just _is distracted_ by him, naturally.

It’s hard not to be. When Claude sits up in his lap, Sid is exposed to the full sight of him, his body hair bathed golden by the sunset stretching through the windows.

“Lube,” Claude says, and Sid scrambles to get it from the bedside table.

He fingers Claude probably not enough, but Claude tells him, “It’s good, it’s good,” gets a condom on Sid and sinks down onto his dick anyway. It’s one long, drawn-out movement, like he knows he shouldn’t be taking it quite yet but couldn’t wait.

They go agonizingly slow for the first few minutes, Claude adjusting at his own pace and Sid grinding his teeth because it’s so good and so not enough. Regardless, they settle into a rhythm—watching Claude ride him is a whole new perspective, his full cock swinging with every time he lifts himself up and drops down again. Sid has to get a hand around it, and then he’s smearing the leftover lube from his other all on Claude’s hip and ass, wherever he can touch.

Sid has to bite his lip and flex his toes and focus his breathing to keep from coming first, but it’s not out of pride anymore. Or it is, but a different kind. It’s that he needs to see Claude shoot all over Sid’s stomach because Sid is fisting his cock, because Sid is inside him making him feel that way.

After Claude comes, Sid is prepared to pull out and get himself off, but Claude folds down onto him and says, “You can keep going,” so Sid thrusts up into him until he comes apart, sucking marks into Claude’s shoulder over his sun freckles.

Claude lets Sid slip out of him then, but he doesn’t move far. He drapes himself over one side of Sid’s body and snuffles into Sid’s shoulder like he might go to sleep again. He’s so hopeless at staying awake after an orgasm, especially if he’s been fucked. Sid doesn’t want to imagine Claude sleeping with someone intolerant of that, someone who wanted to kick him out of bed so he couldn’t rest or who would take advantage of him while he did. Claude had handled himself fine back when they’d first started hooking up, but now it squeezes something in Sid’s chest to think about somebody telling Claude to get lost when it’s only been five minutes and Claude is already breathing with that familiar rhythm that means he’s unconscious.

Sid lies there with him for a few moments, tracing a forefinger up his spine. Then he eases himself out from underneath to go get a washcloth from the bathroom. He cleans Claude up as gently as possible so as not to disturb him, perfunctorily running the rag over the crease of his ass and his spent, softening cock. He could get up again to put the dirtied cloth with the laundry, but then Claude shifts and flops an arm out where Sid should be, so he settles for tossing it on the floor and rolling back to meet Claude in the middle of the bed.

It’s too early to go to sleep. The sky’s only just turned cobalt. So Sid just closes his eyes and thinks about how he’ll make good on his word and take Claude to the rink tomorrow. That’ll be after they’ve slept another whole night in the same bed, which is odd to realize. It occurs to him that he’s never really seen Claude in the aftermath of having done this together, never been with him for that long after fucking him. Maybe he’ll skate with a visibly different stride tomorrow. Maybe Sid will be able to just look at how Claude walks and remember. He’ll have to wait and find out.

\---

Having fallen asleep so early means Claude wakes up at the ass crack of dawn and then won’t stop fidgeting, which is just as well, since it gives Sid cause to get them both up to sneak into the rink when no one is there yet aside from the rink manager. It’s not really sneaking for Sid, because he was given keys years ago, but he’s definitely trying to keep Claude undercover.

Seeing Claude on the ice again after a couple days in his presence at home is a little bit odd. It reminds Sid that they have roles to play in public as rivals, enemies. Sid doesn’t think that’ll ever completely go away, because something about playing the Flyers will always fire him up a little extra. But at the same time, Sid has known since he and Claude first played together internationally that those roles were starting to shift, and now he feels like the cast-iron armor of warring captains they used to wear is too stiff to still fit. Maybe that’s okay, because Sid knows how to compete hard against someone he doesn’t hate. Most of the people he competes against, he doesn’t hate. That doesn’t mean he loses the drive to win.

And Sid never does lose the drive to win, not even going one-on-one versus Claude in a deserted rink in his little hometown before the sun is all the way up. They’re scrambling around each other in circles and putting their backs into it, and Claude has a crazed look in his eye that Sid can imagine is reflected in his own.

It eventually devolves into something more like a skills competition, a game of HORSE where they’re trying to hit this water bottle, that post. Whacking a slapshot at the crossbar, Claude says, “Seriously, um. I hope you’re not too weirded out.” It takes Sid a moment to even catch onto what he’s talking about, when he continues, “You know. That I’m up here.”

Sid can read the insecurity in the comment, but can’t tell where it’s coming from. Claude showing up had been surprising, to say the least, but things have gone fine so far for the most part. “Oh, no,” Sid tells him. “It’s been good to have a…consistent partner,” he finishes, remembering what he’d told Tanger.

Claude blinks once, twice. Juggles a puck with his stick until he drops it. “Oh,” he says back, shooting Sid something that approaches a smile. “Good.”

Sid nods. “Good.” He pulls in the puck Claude dropped, half-heartedly stickhandles a bit with it just for something else to look at.

Claude sweeps it away from him in a flash, does an exaggerated spin-o-rama move to shoot it into the empty net. “Don’t fall asleep,” he warns.

Sid shakes his head, grinning down at the ice. “I won’t.”

\---

A few more days pass by, and Claude keeps staying, and Sid learns a lot.

Claude repeats things several times in a row even though everyone heard him the first time. He loves to tell people if they’re being dumb. His lips are deep pink and smooth, though he doesn’t put them on Sid’s again. He has an array of facial expressions to convey each of his passing feelings, but sometimes he only needs one. He won’t let Sid get away with anything. He runs his mouth just to fill a silence, but when he isn’t in the mood to talk, no one can get a word out of him. He’s bothersome, wild at the wrong moments, and he makes Sid’s heart sound like a jazz band, banging hard on the offbeat.

Claude is just as chippy and hasty and try-hard as he always was, but Sidney has never been more wrong about someone.

\---

They’re still sleeping in the same bed, Sid is forced to accept. He decides not to examine it too closely. It’s convenient, when he wakes up hard and Claude is right there to stroke him off languidly, to kiss up the side of his neck to that sensitive spot right below his ear.

“ _Oh_ ,” Sid gasps, eyes closing as Claude tugs on his morning wood. He feels a little lazy, doing nothing but lying there on his back, but it’s nice. Claude’s body is warm, a reminder of a night spent under the same covers. “Can you…” Claude tightens his grip and swipes his thumb over where Sid is leaking precome. “Yeah, that’s it.”

“I know you’re about to come,” Claude mumbles into his neck. “You get the same way every time.”

Sid would give him shit for that comment if he weren’t definitely about to come. So he doesn’t say anything when he spills over Claude’s moving fingers, just tries not to breathe too shallowly until he’s through the aftershocks.

“Told ya,” Claude holds his hand up in illustration before he scoots away and off the bed to head into the bathroom. Sid hears the sink run a moment later. When Claude comes back, he lifts the covers and tucks himself back into Sid’s space, lifting a thigh over his hip.

“Uh, do you want a hand?” Sid asks. He can feel that Claude is at least half-hard against him, but he doesn’t seem inclined to do more than press his face to the hollow of Sid’s throat.

“Mmm, don’t feel like it. Sleepy.”

“Okay.” His arm is going to go numb if Claude’s weight stays on it, so he pulls it out and rests it on the other side of Claude’s back.

Sid should get up, get to a workout, a meal. Instead, he stays where he is and takes in the morning. The sunburns high on Claude’s chest are starting to peel. Sid picks at them for him, dragging the layers of dead skin from where they fray.

He’s not sure how much time passes like that before Claude says, “My flight’s this afternoon.”

Oh. “Is it?” Sid’s not sure why that sits so unpleasantly in his stomach. Claude has already been in town longer than Sid expected him to be. And Sid hadn’t expected him to be in town at all.

“Yeah. I booked round-trip. But I could—”

Sid waits, and pointedly doesn’t predict what he’s going to say.

“...Never mind,” Claude finishes.

That’s that, then. “Do you need a ride to the airport?” Cabs don’t really hang around anywhere near the lakeside properties deep into the woods where Sid lives, but the airport’s not very far.

“Nah, I have the rental car.” Oh, right. That thing that’s sat unused in Sid’s driveway for a week or so. “You forgot, huh?” Claude’s thumb rubs tiny, idle circles on Sid’s sternum. His hand is uncomfortably close to Sid’s heart.

Sid shifts, eases away from Claude so he can sit up. “Alright. There are probably things I’ve been ignoring anyway. My sister’s going to kill me for leaving her alone with our parents for this long.”

Claude chuckles, but it’s short. “You at least gonna feed me before I get on my way?”

“Sausage and eggs?”

“You know it,” Claude yawns, standing up from bed and traipsing back toward the bathroom, probably to piss. Sid takes a look at his naked back, his ass moving as he walks, then shakes it off. Claude’s entire visit was always going to be just an odd dream he had to wake up from eventually. Sid goes to the kitchen to get to work on breakfast.

When Claude rejoins him, he’s fully dressed. It’s almost weird to see, since Claude has barely had to put on more than shorts or sweats for the past few days. He looks like he’s leaving, because he will be.

They eat slowly and don’t say much. The weight of Claude’s impending departure has stunted the easiness of the morning. By the time Claude is cleaning up after himself and gathering his stuff, it’s already past noon. And soon enough, they’re both hovering in the hallway by the front door.

Claude tucks a thumb under the strap of his bag, slung over his shoulder. “So…thanks for having me, I guess. I’ll see you soon-ish, maybe?”

They do have a preseason game against each other in September. That counts as soon-ish, probably. “Sure,” Sid comes out with.

A grin flickers on Claude’s face. He says, “Okay, if I’m going to catch this plane, I really gotta go.” Then he takes a step closer, and suddenly his warm palm cradles the back of Sid’s neck.

Sidney’s not at all expecting the kiss Claude leaves on his lips. It’s short, but it’s slow, deliberate, this mind-melting thing that leaves Sid braindead. It’s a warm kiss goodbye, or kiss see-you-later. It's totally removed from the context of sex, and given to him with no hesitation whatsoever.

“Bye,” Claude whispers against his mouth when it’s done, his eyes still half-lidded. And the next moment he’s out the door without so much as a glance back over his shoulder.

“Uh, bye,” Sid says to no one after the door closes again.

\---

Sid spends the rest of the day reimagining that kiss a hundred different times, in a hundred different ways. Sometimes Sid pushes Claude away. Sometimes he keeps him longer, fucks him right there by the door. Sometimes it goes exactly as it really happened. Sometimes Claude doesn’t even try to kiss him. Once, Sid even kisses Claude first.

 _This is awful_ , Sid thinks as he realizes with unpleasant and abrupt clarity that he would do anything for Claude to kiss him like that again.

His phone buzzes in his pocket, jerking him into the awareness that he’s been staring at the fruit bowl in the kitchen for at least five minutes. It takes him a minute after he pulls it out to recall his passcode. And after he punches it in, he belatedly remembers that he could have just put his fingerprint on the button, phones work like that now. He shakes his head and opens the text. _Are you alive?_ It’s from Taylor.

 _I think so_ , Sid replies honestly.

 _Well I have everyone thinking you’re deathly ill and contagious._ _Any chance you’ll miraculously heal up in time for dinner over here?_

 _For sure, I’m all set as of today_ , responds Sid, feeling weird.

Taylor writes, _Great, then you can explain yourself tonight like you promised_.

Sid did promise. That doesn’t mean he’s looking forward to it.

So he shows up, tail between his legs, for family dinner at his parents’ house. Taylor is there to greet him at the door, eyebrow cocked, but her arms are open for a hug. Sid obliges, and when they step back from each other Taylor’s face is smug and expectant. “So,” she starts, “bubonic plague all cleared up?”

Sid sighs, resigned. “We’ll talk after dinner.”

“Oh, _after dinner_ , sure. And after dinner it’ll be _tomorrow_. And after tomorrow it’ll be _next week._ ”

“Seriously, Taylor, it’s not a discussion I want to have in front of—”

“Hi Sid,” his dad says, appearing in the hall.

“Dad, hey!” Sid says hurriedly, sliding Taylor a quieting look out of the corner of his eye.

His dad also gives him a hug, plus a few firm backpats. “Feeling better? You were down a long time, did you see the doctor to make sure it’s nothin’ serious?”

“I took care of it,” Sid assures him. “Feeling fine now.”

“Good, because you’ll need a healthy appetite to help us with all the food your mom made.” He shrugs. “I told her not to cook so much, but I should know by now that it’s no use when we have you home.”

Instantly, Sid feels his guilt about ignoring them intensify. Summers are the only extended amount of time he ever has with them, and he should have been taking advantage of that by being around them more rather than indulging in a whirlwind week of whatever it is with Claude.

They manage to get through a whole meal without Taylor raising the topic again, but it doesn’t end up mattering. Sid’s rinsing off his dishes in the sink when his mom gives him a discerning glance while she’s loading the dishwasher. “So you spent the past week getting rested up by yourself?” she asks lightly.

And just like that, Sid knows that she knows there’s more to the story. Taylor seems to sense it too, seeing as she comes scrambling into the kitchen at that exact moment. Even his dad appears, ambling in to put his plate with the rest of the dirty dishes. He stops in his tracks when he looks up to find the three of them in there at a crossroads.

God, Sid is so weak. “Okay, I mean—someone visited,” he confesses.

Troy nods slowly. “You know it’s good for a man to talk about his feelings, Sidney. Or at least, that’s what your mother’s been telling me for decades. Alright, I’ll be upstairs,” he says, promptly disappearing.

“So you had someone special up to visit, is that it?” Trina presses, overly casual in that way that puts Sid on edge.

“No, Mom, it’s not—it’s not like that,” he pushes out. Sid may be an adult, but it’s still difficult not to cringe at the thought of talking to his mom about all the casual sex he’s been having. “It’s not serious. That’s just not what it is.” Claude has a defined role that he plays in Sid’s life, and there’s no changing that, no time to put him in a different box when Sid has a million other things to focus on.

His mother smiles thinly in that way she does before she says something whip-smart and too observant. Sid braces himself. “It may not be serious, but you can always get serious. What was hockey before you made it your life? When you were just a kid slipping around in the skates your dad gave you?”

“Fun,” Sid answers, bereft of any less true answer. “Just something fun.” 

“ _Something fun_ ,” Taylor emphasizes. “Interesting.”

“Exactly,” Trina goes on. “And then you realized you loved it, and you got serious about it.”

Taylor nods, looking impressed. “Wow, Mom. That’s some pretty wise advice,” she says as Sid’s already mentally throwing it in the garbage can, pressing the ‘ignore’ button on that wake-up call. His mom and sister have no idea who or what they’re talking about, and just because they’d like to see Sid in a relationship doesn’t mean that he should consider what he and Claude have to be a relationship.

The issue is that it keeps popping up in his head throughout the rest of the off-season. Sid’s pulling at the thoughts like weeds, trying not to let them breach the surface and yanking them away when they do, but they grow too quickly and in too many places, and Sid can’t exterminate the ideas fast enough. He tries. Claude spending all summer in Nova Scotia. _Yank_. Claude kissing him again the way he did in the hallway. _Yank._ Claude waking up in bed with Sid no matter what city they’re in. Big _yank_.

It all boils down to the simple fact that Sid doesn’t have time to put too much thought into it. Training camp is starting up soon, and early August has him back in Pittsburgh and thoroughly distracted by his own desperation to be prepared for the season. He’s likely making something out of nothing anyway, seeing as he and Claude haven’t even talked that much since he left Nova Scotia. There’s no room for worrying about Claude when Sid has to direct 100% of his attention toward hockey and redemption in the wake of their loss to the Caps.

Preseason begins, and their game against the Flyers lies at the end of it, rapidly approaching. Sid struggles with making a decision on whether or not to even play it. He doesn’t need to _avoid_ Claude; as far as Claude’s concerned, probably nothing has even changed. Sid’s not about to pass up on sex that good because he’s a little confused.

And that’s just what it’s going to be. Sex. Like it always was. They’re going to do it again, and everything is going to be exactly as it was the first time, and Sid is going to get gone as soon as they’ve both come and all parties involved are going to be fine with that. Sid can’t afford any other result.

\---

The Flyers get into town a solid day or so before the exhibition game. Sid knows this because Claude tells him so. He sends Sid a text that says _rolled up on pittsburgh, got skate and team lunch for patty’s birthday but after that i’m free_.

Sid means to respond, he does. He takes his phone out four separate times to craft a reply. But suddenly it seems like more planning and effort than most people put into casual sex, and he and Claude only ever meet up after games, not before them. _Stick to the routine_ , he chides himself mentally.

So a couple hours before the game the next day, he replies, weakly: _Sorry, didn’t see this. I’ll see you after._

 _K_ , Claude sends back. Sid can only wonder if that’s _K_ as in he’s mad, or _K_ as in it’s actually okay.

It seems to be okay when Claude’s team wins the match narrowly, which is fine with Sid because he’d rather lose to the Flyers now than during actual regular season. Sid does media as quickly as possible and then high-tails it to the opposite end of the building, and he’s just in time to catch Claude emerging from the visitors’ dressing room in between Simmonds and Voracek, who come to a stop when they spot Sid. 

“Hey,” Sid announces himself. “Walk with me for a minute?”

Claude tilts his head and gives Sid a long considering look up and down. Then he looks back at Simmonds and Voracek. They give Claude parting head nods in perfect symmetry, like they already know what’s up. If they do, that’s fair. It’d be unrealistic to expect that they could keep this thing totally under wraps, and Tanger knows too.

“Sure,” Claude says as his teammates are already disappearing in the opposite direction. 

Sid leads him down a deserted hallway to a restroom that’s almost never occupied by anyone. He runs a cursory check of the stall doors, and they’re all open. 

Claude looks around himself. “Uh, where are we?”

“Somewhere no one else is,” Sid says, shouldering Claude into one of the empty stalls and locking it behind them. He fits his own back against the flimsy door and hauls Claude closer by the hips.

“ _Oh_ , got it. Jesus, are you that hard-up? You need a bathroom blowjob that bad?” Claude teases, giving in to the pull.

“I wouldn’t say no to one,” Sid hints.

“All you gotta do is ask,” Claude says, throaty in the way he mumbles it into Sid’s collarbone. “Yeah, you could get what you want.”

This already feels dangerously far off from the first time they hooked up in a bathroom, now loaded with something heavy that wasn’t present then. But then Claude gets down on his knees and that’s a safer distance away.

He pulls Sid’s cock out and gives the head a teasing lick. “I mean it,” he says just before he sucks it into his mouth and moves down past the crown to where it gets fatter, then pulls off again with a pop. Sid’s caught between his awe at how ridiculously hot Claude looks, down there treating Sid’s cock well like he always does, and his panic at the words because Sid doesn’t want either of them to mean anything. He swallows down the impulse to shush Claude.

Regardless, the silence makes Claude pause. His eyes drift up to Sid’s in hesitant increments. His lips part, but it’s not to take Sid in again. “Kind of thought I’d see you before now. At least yesterday, or something,” he admits, overly-casual. 

Sid digs around for a response. Despite the faux nonchalance, Claude’s statement reeks with the implication of a deeper purpose, but Sid can’t tell what that purpose is. Is it a test? A confession? “I just figured it’d be easiest to squeeze this in now,” he settles on.

It’s the wrong answer. Claude’s hand falls slowly, numbly away from the base of Sid’s dick.

“Squeeze me in, like a fucking appointment, huh? Between your other errands?” Abruptly, Claude’s tone is not casual at all.

“That’s not what I meant,” Sid tries to backpedal, already feeling deep in his gut that it’s too late. He’s made a mistake somewhere that he can’t un-make, because once something sets Claude off, that’s that.

Claude is shaking his head with a flat gaze from where he’s still perched on his knees, level with Sid’s quickly wilting erection. “I thought you understood,” he says. “You think I came to Nova Scotia for no reason, for the hell of it? Because I was bored?”

Well, yeah, that’s kind of what Sid thinks. Claude certainly hadn’t been willing to explain otherwise. “What reason could there be?” Sid asks carefully. He can think of one, shouting its own existence faintly from the outskirts of his conscience, but it cannot be correct. Sex is what they’d agreed upon. There had never been mention of anything else.

Claude is silent for a chilling expanse of time, blank in the face. “None, apparently,” he finally responds. Then he scowls down his own body, appearing to get angry at himself in a way that shatters Sid’s heart more than anything else that’s happened in the last five minutes. “What the fuck am I even doing on my knees when there’s nothing for me here?”

He abandons his post on the bathroom floor, he swats some dust off the knee of his pants, and he unlatches the stall door. He walks the fuck away while Sid still has his flaccid dick out, like Sid really, really deserves it. Sid will be forced to consider all the ways in which he does.

\---

Sid makes it home on autopilot. The sound of him opening and closing the front door is painful in the silence of the night. He gives his phone a futile check and sees that he has no new messages. He could send one, but none of the words he has are good enough. All of his actions are slow, sluggish, weighed down by something. He can’t remember what it is that he usually does when he comes home, attempts to pick up a book but nothing on the page will process.

He tries to tap out of the confusion by heading to bed early, but Claude’s hopeless look is there when he closes his eyes.

Claude, who…if Sid is real with himself, practically lives in his head anyway. Sid tries not to reach for a body that’s not there under the covers. The ache of it is unfair, because he’d been sleeping alone just fine before now. What a fool he is, thinking about that kiss all summer and then willfully ruining his own chances at having another one. He thinks about what it might be like to kiss Claude while they’re both smiling, thinks about how much he wants to know. How much he’d rather see Claude’s face lit up than hollow with disappointment. And Sid could be the cause of either one. For every time Claude has said Sid’s name like a curse, he’s said it twice like a prayer.

Sid had tried to run from what he thought was wrong and found that it was right. He’d tried to run from what he thought was uncomfortable and found that the pieces of his life before Claude no longer fit comfortably. And he’d like to say that he never realized that what he felt with Claude was happiness until he felt this helpless, unexplainable sadness after pushing him away. But in reality, he’d known for a long time and run anyway.

\---

It takes four days for Geno to show up on his doorstep.

Sid opens the door and he’s there, arms crossed over whatever snappy saying is on the front of his shirt. He’s wearing that trucker hat that has a penguin on it, but the bill of his cap isn’t low enough to cover his unimpressed stare. “Tanger say you hide,” he accuses.

“I was at skate just this morning,” Sid argues.

Geno’s head drops an inch lower, gaze sharpening. “But you still hide.”

Sid debates whether to confirm or deny. Neither option would have any bearing on what Geno thinks is true. “How does Tanger know that?” he chooses.

“He say you not answer his texts or calls. No one see you away from rink. You here, just sulking?”

“What would I even be sulking about?” Sid deflects, because he may know that Claude is the answer to that question, but Geno doesn’t. Geno ignores him to elbow his way past the threshold, strolls easily into Sid’s house and goes about making himself at home: he leaves his shoes by the door, flops onto Sid’s couch, and throws his legs onto the coffee table. Sid wishes, wishes he could stop him.

“ _I’m_ not know,” Geno continues at least two whole minutes later. “Maybe you have to say, actually talk.”

Sid sits down in the armchair diagonal to him and hopes it doesn’t look like surrender. “But I don’t want to,” he maintains, even though his resolve is already starting to crumble.

Geno laughs at him, doesn’t even try to look like he’s not. “Don’t want, but I think maybe it’s good for you!”

 _Good for him_ , there’s an idea. Sid feels like he’s spent the whole year rummaging around and trying to find what’s good for him, shed the things that aren’t. Hanging onto the scraps of whatever he once felt for Geno isn’t good for him, he knows that. That’s the one thing he has always been right about. Shedding the echoes of what never materialized with them has been a gradual, smarting process that has taken far longer than it had any right to. But Sid looks in his eyes now and has to consciously search for the phantom throb in his heart Geno used to raise effortlessly and constantly—it’s so faint. Whether that’s because of Claude or just because Sid’s grown, he doesn’t know. But either way, Sid could take this chance to quell it, once and for all.

“I think I fucked up,” he starts.

Geno nods with all the awareness of someone who can tell when Sid thinks he fucked up. He doesn’t need to be told. “Yes, okay, how?”

“There was, um, this guy,” Sidney says, steeling himself. If this is as close as he’ll ever get to come, he might as well follow through. “I wanted him for a long time.” Sid glances up to check, and Geno is looking back at him patiently. He takes a steadying breath. “But it never ended up that way with us. And I think I tore myself apart over it for a lot longer than I needed to. And now there’s another guy, who I just kind of fell into it with. It wasn’t supposed to be serious, but I think maybe we actually like each other?”

Geno still doesn’t move to speak. He looks ill-prepared but determined to listen until Sid’s through. Geno is standing under a waterfall with a bucket here, but Sid goes on, because Geno will catch some, and what he doesn’t will at least get to fall over the edge. “But I avoided it for a long time, probably because I still felt weird, like…laying that first guy to rest.” Sid closes his eyes, grips his thumbs in his own loose fists. “I think it’s that it’s hard for me to let go of dreams. I’ve never really had to do it before? So I guess I just didn’t want to—settle for anything else. I didn’t want it to mean that I failed.”

“It’s hard, Sid.” Geno straightens up, shakes his head sympathetically. “I understand. Had dreams like that, loves like that before. Hard to give up when we so used to just work hard and get what we aim for, even if it’s for best to let go. But other guy, new guy, he’s make you happy?”

“Yeah,” Sid breathes, admitting it to himself as well as Geno. He thinks about dumb dares in a Tampa bar, bickering over movie choices, racing to the far shore. Things he never got to do with anyone before, things he couldn’t do with anyone but Claude. “All the time.”

Geno smiles like he knows Sid’s going to be alright. “Then how it’s fail? How it’s settle, Sid? Settle for happy? Settle for heart not broken?”

The laugh Sid gives is wet and embarrassingly frail. “You know, you might be right.”

“I’m right,” Geno declares. “I’m always right. You know this by now. Come,” he says, standing up and holding his arms out for Sid to step into. Geno tucks him into his safe hold, the smell of him familiar, and Sid feels wetness build behind his eyelids. He does his best not to cry into Geno’s shirt, like a childhood blanket he’s letting go of. “Don’t be stranger, okay? You so separate, now. Not need hang out alone, sad in house, Sid, can always come over. Anya and Nikita too, we here.”

“Yeah,” Sid says, barely above a whisper. “You’re right.”

As Geno leaves him, Sid takes a heavy seat back in the armchair. That was a lot to say goodbye to, but he has new dreams now. Not just for himself, but of being a real friend to Geno. Of being in Nikita’s life in a way that isn’t fucked up and self-destructive. Of being what Claude wants and needs, the way he _knows he can_.

He does cry a little bit, but it feels so good. It feels like being washed clean.

\---

“Hey,” Sid says into the phone.

“Oh, now you take my calls,” the voice on the other end says back.

“I know, but listen, Tanger, I need some help. I decided to stop being stupid and…” he trails off, distracted by checking his rear view mirror to see if it’s safe for a lane change. The Chevy Silverado in front of him, license plate FCKPENS, is moving at an alarmingly glacial pace, and is also probably being driven by a rather unsavory person.

The gap gives Tanger plenty of time to cut in with, “That’s going to take more than just my help, buddy.”

“Very funny,” Sid says, eyes catching on a road sign. _Philadelphia_ , it reads, _52 mi._ “Okay, so what do you do if you screw it up with someone because you were determined not to date them, but then you realize that you actually do want to date them? How do you even apologize for that?”

Tanger falls dead silent somewhere in Pittsburgh, a four hours’ drive behind Sid. “I _knew_ you liked Giroux, what the fuck? Just wait till Flower hears about this. Why doesn’t anybody listen to me?”

“I’m listening to you now if you’ve got any miracle ideas!” Sid tightens the hand he has on the steering wheel. He should’ve known Tanger would be insufferable about it. 

“Well first, you need to apologize probably in person, Sid. I don’t think texts cut it on this one.”

“Sure,” Sid says. “Okay, so—after that?”

“Wait,” Tanger pauses. “Why is your reception so shitty? Where are you calling from?”

Sid purses his lips, glances at the name of the next highway exit. “I’m just, uh. Soakin’ up the sights in Morgantown, Pennsylvania.”

All of Tanger’s words on the other end are abruptly Quebecois. Eventually, in English again, he chastises, “Are you calling and driving right now? Didn’t anyone ever tell you not to do it?”

“You’re on speaker,” Sid lies. “Anyway, what I’m looking for is: how do I show him I’m sorry? How do I make him not slam the door in my face? Come on, you’re good at this stuff.” 

Tanger sighs. “If he’s mad at you, you better come armed with I think, like, four gifts. If you wanna be serious then you need to bring the romance.” He waits a beat. “And the groveling.”

“Got it, so something like…flowers?” Sid asks slowly.

“Flowers can be a nice touch,” Tanger grants him, “but I think Cath only started taking me serious when I got her presents only _she_ would like, instead of the cookie-cutter stuff, roses and chocolate and shit. Besides, Giroux is a guy.”

“I’m a guy and I like chocolate,” Sid protests.

“Whatever, Sid. All I’m saying is you gotta get him something that shows you know him, and you care.”

Sid does know Claude, and he does care, as batshit insane as it may be. “Alright. I can do that.”

The sun is starting to set by the time Sid has reached the city limit of Philadelphia and run by a grocery store, a department store, a pet store, and a florist that was minutes away from closing, because Sid only knows how to do things all-out. After he pulls up to Claude’s building and leaves his car with the valet, his hands are so full that he has to hurry in the door behind someone else seeing as he won’t be able to open it himself. He tries to look as if he belongs there, walking nonchalantly straight to the elevators, but his armful of things must make him conspicuous. He gets stopped by the receptionist, who asks, “Sir, are you here to visit someone?”

Sid stops, caught. He takes the few steps up to the desk. “Yeah, um. Giroux?” he says softly, glancing around himself.

“Ah,” the man says. “I’ll have to buzz and ask if it’s okay to let you up. Your name?”

Great. Sid leans in, summoning his quietest register. “Crosby?” he whispers, but the lobby happens to fall abruptly silent just before he says it, and his mumble sounds deafeningly loud in the empty space. Everyone loitering within five feet of him rotates their head. Sid wishes briefly for death.

“Oh,” the receptionist blinks.

“You know what, I’ll just call him myself, I promise it’s fine, thanks very much bye,” Sid rattles off, fumbling his phone out and walking away before he can be stopped. He’ll be lucky if he doesn’t get thrown out by security before he makes it up. Maybe that would be less painful than what Claude might do to him.

Sid doesn’t have time to be nervous about pressing the call button by Claude’s contact for the first time in, well, ever. He gets sent swiftly to voicemail, which is predictable, so he calls again, simultaneously jamming the elevator call button with his elbow a few times.

“What,” Claude’s voice answers, flatly and suddenly.

“Hi!” Sid rasps, breath catching into the phone. It’s going to slip out from between his shoulder and his ear in less than a minute. “Hi.”

“ _What_ , Sid,” Claude grouses.

“Are you at home?” Sid asks, stepping into the elevator and pushing for the top floor. A woman with a dog in her purse breezes in just before the door closes. She pushes the button for the ninth floor and throws Sid’s bouquet a sideways glance.

“Yes, why the fuck—you’re cutting out, but did you just ask—you know what, don’t call me.”

“No, no, listen.” Sid taps his foot. The doors slide open and closed to let the lady off at the ninth floor. “I’m on my way up. Will you let me in?”

There’s no reply. “Claude?” He hears the tell-tale beep of the call disconnecting.

That could totally be the call just dropping because he’s in an elevator. The doors ding open again, much higher up, and Sid recognizes what’s on the other side this time. He can’t really knock with everything in his hands, so he raps his knee against the door. “Claude?” he tries again.

“Are you fucking kidding me?” Claude snaps from the other side. Sid imagines his face pressed against the peephole, and puts on his most sheepish smile.

“I know you probably don’t want to let me in,” Sid starts. “I get that. But I—brought some things, so at least let me leave them?” 

The door cracks open a few inches. “Go away,” Claude says more audibly, but still from behind that barrier. He starts to shut it again, but there’s enough room for Sid to unceremoniously shove his nearest hand through the gap. It’s the hand with the flowers in it. The door freezes. “What the hell are those?” Claude demands.

“A nice touch,” Sid says. Then he gathers his breath for one last attempt before he can’t justify invading Claude’s space any further. “Please let me in?”

He can hear Claude sigh. Sid would do anything just to know what face he’s wearing behind the cracked door. “I shouldn’t,” Claude says, small.

Sid is well-trained in telling the difference between _no_ and _probably not but maybe_ , the space where there’s still a chance for unlikely success. Sid thrives in that space. “But?” he prompts.

“But I guess we can talk,” Claude relents, and then Sid can see him, his ginger stubble and his worn sweatshirt. He looks tired, but fine. Sid could never have come and Claude would have been fine without him, because that’s what he does. He takes what comes even if it’s not the desired result, and he stubbornly keeps going, keeps trying, keeps adjusting, in spite of everyone who thought he couldn’t. The misstep in Sid’s heartbeat at the sight of him is overwhelming.

Sid steps in past the door while Claude’s feeling charitable enough to hold it open for him. “It’s good to see you,” he can’t help but say. Claude doesn’t say it back, but he does peek up and meet Sid’s eyes directly for the first time, so Sid pushes onward. “Look, I know I’ve been kind of, um, dense, a lot of the time on purpose. But I don’t want to refuse to think too hard about you anymore, because I think you deserve better. I’m sorry.”

“What does that even mean?” Claude asks, shaking his head.

Sid swallows. “It means I brought food and good wine and sea salt-caramel chocolate and even a candle, and I’d like to spend time with you.”

Claude stares at him. “None of that explains what’s in the giant Petco bag,” he comments.

“Oh,” Sid says, setting the other bags at his feet so that he can pull out what’s inside. “This is a penguin toy for Harvey, so he can chew on the head of the enemy. And this other thing, I’m not totally sure how it works, but the box says it’s a little camera that you can stick low on your wall and when Charlie comes up to it while you’re away on road trips, your phone will notify you and you can see him and talk to him. Like Skype.”

“That is so…weird and cute,” Claude says. He examines Sid carefully for a minute then, eyes full of something that makes Sid’s chest clench. “Fine. You can stay,” he decides, and takes Sid’s bags into the kitchen without looking at him.

 _Fucking bless Tanger_ , Sid thinks.

Claude finds a vase for the flowers and doesn’t tell Sid they’re too girly, although he does bemusedly say, “I never had to use this before.” Sid concentrates on getting plates out of the cupboard without his hands trembling when Claude has to move in close to get to the wine glasses. They take dinner into the living room and take up on the couch, where Sid will make sure their legs brush under the blanket.

“Light the candle,” Claude says, handing him matches. “I hope it smells obnoxious.”

“Definitely smells like junk,” Sid tells him, and sets the candle ablaze on the coffee table. “It’s Autumn Leaves scent.”

“Cozy,” Claude remarks, an inclination of his head serving as punctuation.

The dogs are roused by the smell of food, or maybe Autumn Leaves, and come trotting curiously into the room. Claude says, “Look, Harv,” and tosses him the chew toy. Harvey takes to it right away, and Claude laughs at the sight. Sid has never been so proud to see a penguin demolished.

“Let’s try to set up that camera thing,” Claude suggests when they’re done eating and Charlie and Harvey have fallen asleep, so they bring their wine and the box over by the dogs’ food bowls and crouch down to fasten it to the wall. Claude spends ten minutes downloading the app and syncing his phone to the camera, and Sid spends ten minutes next to him on the floor, fruitlessly making made-up settings recommendations and staring at the furrow between Claude’s brows. He wonders at how he ever thought he didn’t feel the way he feels right now, or that it would be wrong if he did. Now, he could let himself have what he wants. Claude glances back at him, guarded and all at once so transparent, and Sid thinks that maybe he could also let himself want what he has. 

Sidney won’t hesitate. He drains what’s left in his glass, sets it aside, and puts his mouth over Claude’s. “ _Sid_ ,” Claude groans, and then opens into him, easy, breathless, and pleased. He pushes Sid down to the floor and unfolds on top of him, kisses him back.

Sid’s not sure how long they spend lying there, just kissing. Claude tastes like the red wine he poured them, deep and heady. Sid is starting to get hard but it’s distant, less important than holding Claude’s face or squeezing his hip. It hits him that maybe he finally gets what people mean when they say they’ve never felt a certain way about someone before. It’s less dramatic and world-altering than it sounds; he’s just never had this exact, unique feeling until now, choked-up and bursting.

Sooner or later, Claude grinds down on Sid’s hips with purpose. “You gonna just kiss me forever?” he teases, but he looks happy.

“Something like that,” Sid mumbles, feeling obvious. He smooths a hand up Claude’s back until it rests between his shoulder blades. “I can wait,” he promises.

“I don’t want to,” Claude admits. “Can I take you to the bedroom?”

Sid’s never really been in it before. The one time he’d been to Claude’s apartment, they’d pretty much kept to the living room. “Yeah, let’s go.”

He lets Claude help him up from the floor and lead him down the hall to his room, fingers interlaced like kids on their prom night.

Except they’re far from virginal, and Sid can do Claude much better than that kind of passive uncertainty. When they’ve closed the door behind them, Sid twists a hand into the fabric of Claude’s collar and gives him a slow, open kiss. It’s the kind that makes Claude groan, hot and molten, and reach for the hem of Sid’s shirt to pull it over his head. Sid strips them both out of their clothes, guides Claude down onto the mattress, and covers him with the searing heat of his own skin. He parts his thighs over Claude’s hips and revels in the tease of their cocks sliding against each other, works it back and forth like that until Claude is whining for something more substantial. Usually this is the part where Sid would hitch Claude’s legs up and get some fingers in him, and Claude is already reaching for the lube from the bedside table in anticipation of that very move, but Sid thinks back to Claude craning his neck to watch Sid blow him for the first time, gaze pasted to the power of the image. He thinks about Claude’s eyes on his profile with a damp suit clinging to his body, and the way he’d fucked Sid afterward. Sid wouldn’t mind doing it that way again, knows he could make it good and visual.

Claude tries to hand him the lube, but Sid presses the bottle back into his hands. “Get me ready,” he says.

That punches a breath out of Claude. “Yeah?”

“Mhm.” Sid kisses him one more time, then turns himself around, parks his hips right over Claude’s chest, ass on full, shameless display.

Claude’s curses turn French and his hands come up to spread over Sid’s cheeks, too big to fit. He pulls them apart a little bit. “Fuck, Sid, that’s not fair.”

“D’you know what to do with it?” Sid teases, low and thickly sexual enough that it’s almost a purr. 

“God, fuck you,” Claude says, so short of breath that Sid can’t tell if it’s an insult or a genuine answer.

Claude opens him up diligently, thoroughly, despite the distraction of Sid’s face down by his crotch, blocked from view so he can’t tell when Sid’s going to give him a little tug, a little lick. He crooks his fingers over Sid’s prostate without a real rhythm, more concentrated on the stretch, getting Sid full up with as much as he can take. And the way Claude lingers with his mouth, leaving kisses and soft bites just outside the cleft of his ass, it gives Sid something to think about. He files it away for later, another thing to look forward to trying. 

“Okay, I’m good, let me—” Sid lets out a broken exhale as Claude’s fingers draw out. He sits up and shuffles forward, peering over his shoulder to ask, “Condom?”

Claude gives him one and lets Sid roll it down all the way onto him before he says idly, “Probably wouldn’t need one at this point.” Sid can tell exactly what it is: not a suggestion that they don’t use one, but an admission that he hasn’t been sleeping with anyone else. Perhaps Sid should have drawn that conclusion a long time ago.

“Probably wouldn’t,” Sid agrees, an echo of the same confession. And then he repositions, reaches back to fit the tip of Claude’s dick to his entrance, and sinks down.

Claude holds incredibly still for him as he does it, doesn’t try to thrust up to get more before Sid is ready. When he’s seated all the way down, Sid twists to look behind himself, but he can’t see what he’s feeling, Claude stiff and thick inside him. Nevertheless, Claude’s eyes are locked there, and he looks rocked, a touch frenzied. “ _Fuck_ ,” he whispers as Sid rises up an inch and drops back down. But Sid can do even better.

He leans forward, folding down and bracing himself over Claude’s legs so all Claude can see is Sid’s rim stretched tight around the girth of his dick. Sid knows he probably won’t come like this even though it does feel good, but that’s not the point. What matters is that he’s giving Claude a perfect view of his ass working to take him, arching and flexing each time he pushes back onto his cock. What matters is that he’s blowing Claude’s mind. He can tell by the way Claude’s toes curl.

That, and he’s running his mouth like he never has before during sex. “God, you’ve always been so fucking sexy,” Claude tells him. “You do it for me, you know? Your ass, holy hell, Sid.” Sid’s never been much for talking in bed, but…he loves it like this because it means Claude feels safer now, like he can be honest. So Sid rewards him by talking back with his body. Claude says how tight he is, so Sid clenches tighter; Claude says he loves Sid’s cock too, so he makes sure it’s brushing into the dip between Claude’s thighs when he rocks forward. He pulls words out of Claude until Claude has no more, until he just has, “baby, _baby_.”

Sid sits up straight again and keeps riding, lets his head drop back. He lets God see his smile.

\---

The next morning has Sid feeling golden. The night before, he’d gotten to wrap himself around Claude when they were done and comfortably drop off without the nagging restlessness of the previous few days. It’s probably the first time he’s ever fallen asleep before Claude, and he’s happy to wake still spooned up against Claude’s back, warm and solid. It feels familiar and new all at once, putting him back in the headspace of some of his best memories from summer at the same time as sparking an awareness that this bed is one Sid has never woken up in before.

He peels himself off Claude’s body and sits up. He has time before he needs to head back to Pittsburgh, hours, and Claude’s still snoring. Sid is tempted to just lie back down for a few minutes, but his stomach is rumbling. He could make breakfast.

He puts on underwear and ambles into the kitchen to check out the refrigerator. Claude has full eggs but also a carton of liquid egg whites, and Sid debates whether to choose the option his nutritionist would like him to. As he ponders what to make, he looks around at Claude’s home, takes stock of things the way he hadn’t when he’d first come. There’s clutter in various spaces around the kitchen, but his coffee mugs are perfectly in order, upside down with their handles out to the right. He resists the temptation to crack another cabinet open, to know more. There’ll be time for that later.

“Sid?” Claude’s voice comes suddenly and sharply from the bedroom.

“In the kitchen,” Sid calls absently, pulling a pan out from a drawer.

After a few moments, Claude appears in the room. He’s put a shirt and sweats on, and he’s picking at the seam on his outer thigh where there’s a loose thread. Sid glances over at him, and all he can think is that Claude looks different than Sid feels. “So, do you need to take off back to Pittsburgh today?” Claude says too lightly, as if Sid can’t see through that behavior of his yet.

Sid narrows his eyes. “At some point, yeah. I don’t have to go right away, but—”

“Listen,” Claude interrupts, “I can’t waste any energy on wondering if you’re gonna contact me or not, it’s gotten old, so you should just tell me if you’re not going to.”

Sid bristles. He knows from long experience that he doesn’t appreciate being asked questions like the answer is already given, especially if the answer being fed to him isn’t the one he had in mind. “Where is this coming from? I thought I was clear last night.”

“Clear about _what_ , Sid?”

“We had a really nice time, didn’t we? Can you just let that—”

“No, I can’t just let it be, because you don’t say anything!” Claude bursts. “You don’t _tell me_ your plans and you don’t talk about whether this means anything to you.”

“That doesn’t mean it doesn’t,” Sid insists, unsure whether he’s arguing or asking for forgiveness. If it’s the latter, then he’s pushing down his resentment for asking forgiveness when he’s not the only one who could’ve done better, when—

“Then say you—” Claude cuts himself off. “Say what you fucking feel!”

Sid knows his incredulity is loud on his face. “I know I should,” he says. “But you’ve never actually asked before, never once admitted that you wanted to hear it—”

“I’m asking now,” Claude interrupts for the thousandth time.

He’s infuriating. Sid could be feeling so angry or so happy or so sad, and no matter what, Claude could turn it all around. There is absolutely no one on this Earth like him. Sid leans back against the oven and crosses his arms. “What, you want me to say right now that I love you?”

He intends it to sound false and skeptical, almost cruel in the way it’d sounded in his head two seconds before he let it out. But he finds instead that it just sounds horribly, horribly like the truth. And he’s _known_ this, he has. He hadn’t connected it to a word, but he’s known there was something here that he’d drive hours to get to.

“If it’s true!” Claude half-shouts, still indignant like he’s completely missed the last of Sid’s illusions crumbling before him. It only takes him a moment of silence to catch up, though, just a moment of watching Sid’s wide eyes blink. The anger between them vanishes within the space of maybe three seconds. Claude takes in an audible breath. “Is it true?” he asks, a fraction of the volume. He’s only a foot away from Sid now, but Sid doesn’t even remember when he got that close.

“Yeah,” Sid responds, because it is, even though he can’t comprehend how or why.

Claude closes the distance between them then, tucking his body along Sid’s front, hands on either side of him. Sid can feel the knobs of the stovetop digging into his lower back, hopes he doesn’t accidentally set something on fire. His lips find Claude’s, but it hardly qualifies as a kiss because of how hard they’re shaking, mouths together. Eventually, Claude turns his head to burrow into the space between Sid’s neck and shoulder. He mumbles, “ _Je t’aime_ ,” like he can’t decide if he wants Sid to hear it or not, to understand or not.

Sid squeezes Claude’s hips, where his hands already are. He hadn’t even known he’d wanted to hear that. And now he wants to hear it in English, a hundred times over. But he’ll take just this for now. “I want to be with you,” he tells Claude as steadily as he can. “Sorry for making you guess.”

Claude’s breath is soft and warm on his neck. “I’ve been trying to ask for it, but I didn’t think…”

“I didn’t think either,” Sidney whispers, turning to kiss the shell of his ear. He slips a hand under Claude’s shirt and traces it up his back, just to hold more of him. “But I know now.” 

They walk themselves right back into the bedroom they came from. Claude unravels for him, angles into his touch like a plant seeking the light. Sid never wants that to be painful for Claude, loving Sid the way Sid loves him.

Maybe Claude has been asking for a lot longer than Sid realized. So Sid makes love to him deep and slow, surrenders himself to the metaphor of giving it to him.

\---

It’s nowhere near easy, the two of them together. In their worse times, Claude tells him that maybe it would be easier for Sid if he were with someone else, or if both of them were a little better at the things they’re not good at.

Sid says, “I don’t want anyone else,” with all the same certainty that he’d once said _I don’t like him._ Sid says, “We’ll get better,” and Sid’s never broken a promise like that in his life.

\---

“I can’t believe I’m here,” Claude grumbles at the end of February, fussing about with his winter gloves. His elbow accidentally hits the center of the steering wheel and the horn lets out a short honk. Sid looks to the car parked next to them. Dumo and his wife wave back bemusedly from within it.

Sid sighs. “I’m coming with you tomorrow, aren’t I? You suffer now, I suffer later.” He never thought he’d be equating _family skate_ with the concept of _suffering_ , but relationships are about sacrifice, he’s heard.

“Fine, let’s go suffer,” Claude concedes, and then he leans across the console to give Sid a last kiss while it’s still private, their mouths icy cold from the weather.

Lincoln Financial Field is huge, and tomorrow it’ll be full up with fans in orange for the Stadium Series game. Sid doesn’t care how many boos he’ll get, he still can’t help but smile when he thinks about how they can fill a stadium’s worth of seats in Philadelphia just with what they do.

They happen to be taking the ice at the same time as Tanger. He says, “Oh hey, you brought your other half,” in a dry tone, but there’s no hostility there.

“His _better_ half,” Claude corrects, and then he and Tanger share a smirk, which is a truly disquieting sight. They may have their differences, but their mutual love for ribbing Sid bridges the gap.

Tanger huffs a quick laugh, and his breath is visible in the air. “How did Sid rope you into this?”

“Ugh, not too sure,” says Claude. Really, for all his hemming and hawing, it’d been his decision to come in the end. Sid told him he didn’t have to, but Claude had brushed that posturing off quickly and decisively. “It’s family skate,” he’d said, refusing to look away from the TV. “I’ll be there.”

And he’d come. He’d driven them himself and now he’s on the ice, surrounded by people who are constantly hoping he fails, just as Sid will be the next day. James van Riemsdyk is irksome and that Konecny kid needs a muzzle, but Sid can’t wait to torture himself the same way tomorrow.

At least by now everyone’s able to recognize that it’s different away from the game. Horny, who’s being dragged along by his daughter, waves when he passes them by. Jack and his wife skate with them for a companionable minute until they’re stopped for a photo. It’s not long before Sid and Claude catch up to Geno and Anna, who are each holding one of Nikita’s hands in their own and not really moving, because Nikita hasn’t figured out how to control his skates yet.

“Hi Sid,” Anna smiles, before she quickly has to return her attention to steadying Nikita. He wobbles dangerously toward Geno and his right skate slips out from underneath him, but he’s able to stay upright on his left until it comes back down.

“Woah, there. Hi guys,” Sid laughs.

Nikita wriggles his arm out of Geno’s grasp and takes a few unstable strides that don’t get him far. He teeters again, and this time has to reach out for Claude’s knee to grip onto. “Oh, hey little buddy,” Claude says, and seeing him reach down to support Nikita’s elbows squeezes pleasantly at Sid’s heart.

Geno sighs good-naturedly, and tells Anna something in Russian that makes her laugh. He turns back to Sid and translates, “Can’t skate, but he’s like teenager already, tired of parents. We too boring.”

“Aw, no,” Sid shakes his head lightly. “You’re doing a great job. I mean, you guys seem like you are.” He looks at Anna chasing after Nikita as he toddles away again, swallows around nothing in his throat. “Your family, man, that’s amazing. I’m happy for you,” he says, realizing at once that it’s a statement years overdue. He’s said it before, he must have said it, but he can’t for the life of him remember meaning it like he’s able to now.

Claude’s head tilts to the side a bit. Sid has mentioned that he’d been hung up on someone once, the way anyone tells the people they care for about all the things that have shaped them. He’d never said it was Geno, but with the way Claude’s eyebrows rise, he must know Sid well enough to figure it out in the moment. For a brief minute, Sid’s stomach sinks, because Sid’s been worried for months that they’d trip up on something, and this could be the moment where Claude gets jealous or insecure and it all goes to shit.

Instead, Claude just looks him in the eyes and patiently says, “Hey, I’m gonna take a few laps. Come find me when you’re ready, ‘kay?” and skates away like he’s not worried at all. 

And that’s right, that’s exactly right, because Sid’s going to be with Claude for a long, long time. He doesn’t need to be worried. Sid realizes that he must have proved that to Claude somehow, or maybe Claude is right enough for him to just know, and it makes Sid feel indescribably proud.

“Happy for _you_ ,” Geno smiles, bumping their elbows together. “Flyer is terrible choice, but happy for you.”

It doesn’t even hurt. Claude is across the ice skating circles around Pens vindictively, and Sid can’t take his eyes off him.

“Yeah,” Sid hums. “I’m happy too.” The thing Sid’s become steadily more and more sure of as time goes on, he’s suddenly all the way sure of. He could keep waiting for years to fuck things up with Claude—or he could take just this exact moment to decide he never will.

When Sid rejoins Claude, he takes his hand in front of everyone, physically owns up to what they all already know. It’s crossing a line, but crossing lines is the best thing they do together. This is just one of many to come.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And that's that! This turned out to be the longest thing I've ever written. 28k??? This has been in the works since early summer, and I know there are plenty of people who whip out brilliant 100k longfic in that same window of time, but still, it's been quite the journey for me. Thanks to all of you who took the time to read the end result!
> 
> Some helpful links: [Here](https://youtu.be/UVD0THkHbDM?t=827) is Sid's "weird wall of angry motivation," as described by yeswayappianway. Geno wears [this](https://www.instagram.com/p/BnBDcTzhw_6/) hat like 24/7 right now. And as I'm sure a lot of you know, it's really "[I don't like 'em](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YJx-rjxKBrM)" that Sid says about all of the Flyers, but we can be pretty confident that at that point in time Claude was pretty high up on the list. If you'd like to come scream at me about hockey on tumblr, I'm [quickxotic](http://quickxotic.tumblr.com/).


End file.
